Gardener

Master Gardener or The Master’s Gardener?

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I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5 ESV

When I opened my first landscaping business in 1987, I came in with more than a dozen years of experience, a professional license and plenty of specialized training. My plan was to use my expertise to guide and educate customers in the “right way” to maintain their ornamental gardens and trees. Boy did that not work out! What I spent the next thirty years learning was that my job was to serve the desires of my customers. Once I figured that out after years of butting heads, running the business became a delight and people usually loved the results.

Sadly, when some of us come to know Christ, we begin with almost the same mindset. Maybe we have been to Catechism class or spent time in Sunday School and we feel pretty sure that we know how to be good Christians. But that also; most definitely won’t work out! I remember one day a customer noticed a bumper sticker on my truck that said, “We Have a Friend in Jesus” and he asked, “Is that your partner?” I shook my head and laughed answering, “Oh no! He’s the boss!”

Yes, Jesus is the boss, and we are the branches. Doing things our way is no longer an option. But when we get in synch with His garden design, then everything our life will begin to yield beautiful fruit!

The Space Between the Flowers

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And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.  Genesis 2:8 KJV

“What are you doing?!” I shouted at my friend who had weeding in the perennial garden along the back wall.

“Look I pulled all the weeds out!” he said. I shook my head in amazement at the six feet of flower bed that now lay completely devoid of growth of any kind.

“But you pulled everything else out too. Where are the flowers?” I asked in confusion.

“I’m sorry there were so many weeds that I couldn’t tell which ones were the flowers.” He said sorrowfully.

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My fault had been in allowing the weeds to get so thick that it had become impossible to pull them out.  I had forgotten that a garden grows best when there is a space around the flowers.

Maybe that is why we sometimes feel alone and God seems silent. He has not forgotten us, but in the garden that is our soul He has chosen to make some space between the flowers. He pulls out and separates things from our lives so that we will bloom our brightest and most brilliant colors when the season is just right.

Where is Jesus?

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 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb.  And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. John 20:11-14

When our children were small one of their favorite books was Richard Scarry’s  “Cars and Trucks and Things that Go” On every page of the story were all different kinds of vehicles traveling down busy city streets, highways and country lanes. But no matter what page we were on – we and our boys were always on the look out for a tiny gold colored character named Goldfarb (I was never sure if he was a worm or caterpillar). You never knew where Goldfarb might be. On one page he was hiding in the back of a dump truck and on the next he was sitting with the firemen in a big red fire truck. But no matter where he was we all laughed each time we found him.

While this was a pleasant pastime for us a parents, I have discovered that In a similar but much more serious way we need to look for Jesus along the highways and byways of our lives. In the story book every day looks like fun but real life things can be quite different. Some days Jesus is sleeping in our storm tossed boat and others it seems to us that He is days late in showing up to help. We may even find ourselves in the position of Mary as she wept at the tomb supposing that someone had taken Jesus away. Her sorrow was so overwhelming that when the living resurrected Jesus did come she didn’t recognize Him. She turned and thought, “Oh it’s only the gardener…but maybe he knows something about my Lord!”

Maybe God is showing up as a rather plain looking gardener to you today. Maybe there is soil on his knees from laboring with weeds and planting flowers. Maybe his hands are so cracked and worn from work that we fail to recognize the prints of the nails in His palms. As He walks up quietly behind us we don’t see the wounds on His feet that happened on His journey to find us. But the night is almost past and dawn is just beginning to peak over our horizon. Where is Jesus? He is right at our side ready to call our name. Whenever we are seeking Him with all our hearts His word assures us that He will come up our garden paths ready to be found!

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