A couple of years ago, I started gardening. Honestly, it was never something I cared much about—but when we moved to a house with more yard, I figured I’d give it a try.
This is our third year with chickens and our second with the garden. And it turns out, gardening really is full of life lessons. No wonder it shows up all throughout Scripture: the Garden of Eden at the beginning of creation, the Garden of Gethsemane at the hour of agony, and the Risen Christ, mistaken for a gardener. Tending the land is woven into the human story—or at least, it used to be.
What gardening has taught me is this: there’s only so much you can control. You make a plan. You plot the space, build the beds, prepare the soil, water it. But you can’t force a seed to sprout. You can’t will it to grow faster—no matter how impatient your five-year-old might be.
There’s a role for us to play. But at the end of the day, it’s God’s hand that brings forth the fruit.
And isn’t that true in the rest of life? We show up. We do the work. We carry out our responsibilities. But grace? Growth? Life? That’s His doing. We labor alongside the Lord—but it is He who makes the garden grow.