So God made a gardener

On the sixth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, “I need a gardener.”

No, not “farmer,” although that came later. God didn’t have a farm in Eden, but a garden. The thorns and thistles and Bermuda grass had not yet invaded, and life was easier.

Technically, God didn’t need a gardener, or anything else from mankind.

“Nor is He served by human hands, as though
He needed anything, since He Himself gives
to all people life and breath and all
things” (Acts 17:25, NASB).

There is a vital place for farmers today, as Paul Harvey pointed out. But Eden was a simple and beautiful garden. So God made a gardener.

Did God need a gardener to get up early plow straight and not cut corners; to seed, weed, and feed? No, but man needed to have something productive to do. So for God’s own reasons, he needed the gardener to do these never-ending tasks.

So God made the gardener. Gardening is hard work. And God smiles upon that work.

We can be certain that the gardener and his successor, the farmer, are some of God’s favorite people because he put so many parables and allegories in the Bible about them.

Scholars suggest that man was a vegetarian in the days before the Flood, so there was no need for hog-calling or chicken-tending. Adam probably called the hogs only once; when he was instructed to name the animals.

Farmers and gardeners know the agony of loss, and the feeling of “maybe next year” as they keep hope alive against all odds. And so God made a gardener so that he would understand how our Father feels when we fail him, as our crops fail us.

God needed to let man understand the pride in the loving nurture of tiny seed sprouts that will become beautiful plants, trees, and shrubs. What a thrill it must have been to make this amazingly intricate universe!

Our loving Father wanted to share some of the joy. So God made a gardener.

God, in his ultimate creative genius, placed an almost limitless supply of rich DNA material in that first garden, and needed to have someone unlock the combinations to create good food, medicines, and fantastic ornamental plants of every imaginable color.
So God made a gardener.

Man has freewill to choose right and wrong, and live and die with those consequences. So much was given to Adam and Eve. Only one tree was off limits.

God needed to observe if man would keep that one simple rule, or be forever doomed so irreparably that it would cost the Father his only Son’s life, sacrificed on the Cross.

So God made these gardeners, and they failed Him. No sooner than they were caught in their sin and judgment was pronounced, the promise of salvation was also foretold. So God saved the gardener.

We may not all dig in our gardens in the truest form of the word “gardener.” Yet we are all Adam’s descendants and each of us do our part in “tending and keeping” the Earth as God directed in Genesis 2:15.

We all fall into transgression of the will of our Maker, and similarly we all have a hope in his merciful solution to our problem; his son Christ Jesus.

Finally, at the end of the Bible, we read of a new Heaven and new Earth, and a place with a Tree of Life in the middle of it all. It sounds like a garden to me.

So God made the gardeners to live forever!

by Christine Berglund

“Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it;’

Cursed is the ground because of you;
In toil you will eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field; By the sweat of your face You will eat bread, Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return'”
(Genesis 3:15-19 NASB).

We know that our heavenly Father disciplines us for our good, and this example with Earth’s very first inhabitants demonstrates this clearly.

Occasionally, I find myself mildly annoyed that womankind shoulders a lot of Adam’s curse, but I have yet to see a man who has pain in childbirth. No matter; there must be a reason.

However, after a very troubling week, employing a seemingly superhuman effort to contain my anger, I find myself hacking at these weeds with a vengeance.

It is now my urgent and compelling mission to eradicate the undesirable plants in my garden, since I cannot eradicate the undesirable events in my life. It feels good. It feels like I am winning.

Of course this is all in my own imagination. The garden will never be completely free of weeds, no more than life will be free of annoyances and trouble. But it is therapeutic, and for that I am grateful as I give those weeds what’s coming to them.

What if God really couched a great blessing in the “curse” of the ground? What if hard work, especially the specific punishment of Genesis 3, is really meant to be an outlet for anger?

When sin entered the world, it was inevitable that it would cause the righteous to become angry at some of it. Jesus was. It is not wrong to be angry. “Be angry and yet do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26).

So the punishment for sin– thorns and weeds–can actually be an outlet for the anger that was to follow the entrance of sin into the world?

The wisdom of God astounds me!

Some people recommend quelling their anger by punching a pillow or kicking the furniture. I would like to think that my anger management techniques are more genteel, and more productive overall.

While it is true that the garden rewards me with delicious vegetables and a slew of flowers, the violence in my weed reduction techniques is still evident.

I have a wicked-looking Japanese hand hoe, and I’m not afraid to use it!

Your methods may vary, and that’s quite all right. For me, engaging in a grudge match with errant vegetation is therapeutic.

Other people throw themselves into their work as an anger management tool. Again, this is a productive way to redirect bad energy into something useful. God meant for us to work, even before the Fall.

“Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15).

It has been suggested that Heaven is a place where we can work for God. It is beyond my comprehension what work God has for us, but it will not be as boring as the age-old stereotype of sitting on a cloud strumming a harp!

How often do we thank God for work? Do we thank Him for His loving discipline? Thank God for weeds. Take that!

by Christine Berglund