They will be called oaks of righteousness,
    a planting of the Lord
    for the display of his splendor….
For as the soil makes the sprout come up
    and a garden causes seeds to grow,
so the Sovereign Lord will make righteousness
    and praise spring up before all nations. (from Isaiah 61)

Last night, at Flagler College, I preached on the text above and drew from a very personal story. You see, when I imagine the Kingdom of God, I always see a garden, and that’s appropriate since gardens are all over the place in the Bible.
Genesis begins with a garden.
Revelation ends with a garden.
Jesus’ most famous prayers took place in a garden prior to his arrest.
When Jesus rose from the dead, he was mistaken for a gardener.
And most importantly, God is spoken of as a gardener, and we are described as seeds.
We’re seeds because, according to John 12 and 1 Corinthians 15, God calls us forth from the ground into something new. In my message, I took this not only as a reminder of the great resurrection at the coming of the Kingdom, but also the little resurrections that happen day-by-day as God pulls us up from despair and gives us hope for the days ahead. We are seeds in many senses, and God is always the gardener cultivating and nurturing us so that we may come into full bloom in a Kingdom without end.

Here’s where things take a personal turn though.

My mom has a lot of experience with gardening, and she’s still the first person I call when I have a plant-related question. She has always been an avid gardener, but after my sister’s death in 1995, gardening became much more than a hobby; it became a source of comfort. Digging into the soil and watching life grow and thrive was therapeutic for my mom, and she soon encountered other gardeners with similar experiences. She and a family friend worked together to compile these people’s stories into a book titled They That Sow in Tears (which also features suggestions for building your own memorial garden). Last night, I ended my message with a quote from that book as a reminder that renewal is both nature’s way and God’s way:

A garden is an appropriate memorial because it is alive and dynamic. It hurts us that the person who died is now frozen in time, never to get any taller, never to learn any new skills and never to develop new relationships. But a garden is always growing and changing. It embodies that life that your loved one had and still has beyond our sight. Perhaps the only drawback to a garden as a memorial is that it is not permanent, but even this reminds us that life is fragile and transient. The more permanent a memorial is, the more lifeless it is. So if you want to commemorate a person’s death, build a stone obelisk, but if you want to celebrate his life, plant a garden.

In difficulty and in loss, may you think of God the gardener,
constantly cultivating life amid the sorrow.
You are a seed.
This whole world is a seed.
Like a garden, we experience resurrection in small doses every day
as we look toward a greater resurrection still to come.

Amazon carries several used copies of They That Sow in Tears by Catherine Chappell Lewis and Charles Sandifer, but if you’re interested in an unused copy, send me a message.