In the hands of the Gardener who wants to get his hands dirty in the garden of your life.
To till the earth. To remove stones and debris. To mend the soil with compost. To plant seeds. To shape furrows for water. To root out weeds.
It’s no coincidence that the Bible itself begins and ends with a Garden. The story of Scripture runs from first blooms of Eden to the orchard of New Jerusalem—with no shortage of deserts in between.
All along, between the Gardens, there is toil and labor and hard work to be done. Yet it is the Great Gardener’s work, not the work of the Garden. It is God, with sweat on his brown and dirt under his fingernails, who encourages the flourishing. No amount of self-improvement ever helped a plant to thrive—try as we may.
As Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Nothing, that is, except to sit there, rooted and surrendered.
The Bible is a tool best held in God’s hands, not ours. We do not wield the Bible so much as yield to it. We do not read the Bible so much as we allow it to read us. We do not dig into the Bible so much as we let it dig into us.
