Our Gardener God

Dear Friends,

The idea of praying to “Our Gardener God’ is not uniquely mine. If you go to the web, you will find many images and articles about “Our Gardner God.” It is a way of welcoming God who creates, recreates and treasures our earth. Because it’s summer, whether we are outside or not, it seems right to pray to our “Gardener God,” for so God is.

In today’s first reading, Ezekiel lingers over our Gardener God who values the majestic cedars so much that He cuts a portion off and takes it to the mountains, where it will grow unchallenged, and welcome other creatures of the earth for countless generations.

Lavish, generous Gardener God!

No wonder Jesus describes the reign of God with parables taken from gardening and farming:
        The wheat and the weeds that grew up together
        The seed that produced 30, 60, 100–fold,
        and of course, today’s Gospel stories describing the reign of God as
        The seed scattered and left to grow on its own
        The mustard seed: tiny, tiny, so tiny - yet capable of immensity.

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate the lessons taught to me by scratch - gardeners. These patient images of God start seeds along about February or March, coaxing tough little seeds into life. Eventually, when they are judged sturdy enough, the fledgling plants are brought outside in the daytime to harden them.

Humanly speaking, I think God doesn’t want us to be hardened, but hearty and hardy. You and I are made hardy and hearty by God’s gardening.

Godness or God-likeness, grows in us almost imperceptibly, in weakness, poverty and smallness, like vulnerable plants. Such growth is a gift. Pure gift.

On this Father’s Day, I think of how men grow into fatherhood. God is their gardener, whether they perceive it or not. The work is slow and the questions are many. Some questions go unasked. Some can’t be answered except when life is seen in retrospect.

Children need fathers to help plant the seeds of truth-telling and respect for all people. Children need to know they are loved and yet there are times when their father needs to stand back and watch his children grow without him or in spite of him. Today, we bless the fathers who continually deepen who they are for their children. What do you best recall about your own father?

There are boundless life-lessons to learn from the garden and the farm - from our Gardener God who teaches us all two important lesson today:

        ~Growth happens slowly and imperceptibly and often goes unnoticed, but involves others.
        ~The result is bigger, more remarkable than we can imagine.

Today, let’s offer a confident work of thanks and praise to our Gardener God for creating, pruning, bringing forth fruit, sustaining our growth in life and the life of our world.

~ Sister Joan Sobala