My Patch of Earth

We have had a particularly wet summer – the wettest I remember since moving here in 2017. The result is a garden gone mad, luxuriant, and untamed growth spilling out of beds, smothering more reticent plants, happy and undiluted chaos.

I have given it scant attention these past months because it didn’t seem to need me. I usually water twice a week and as I do I have time to notice what is going on, where attention is needed, to see what everyone is up to.

I have probably watered it half a dozen times this summer – that is how much rain we’ve had.

I have tried to maintain some order, but increasingly my unruly lot have done their own thing. Years ago I went to a talk on landscaping, and the instructor told us there were three types of plants: drunks, who fall all over the place, robbers who go into other people’s space without conscience, and the upright characters who maintain their dignity while all around them descend into chaos. He didn’t say that, but that is what is going on in my little patch of happiness.

Plants have spilled out onto the driveway, encroached over the entrance steps, gaily smothered their neighbours, and sprouted relatives in places they have not been permitted to inhabit. In one bed my poor upright citizens, the gentle gardenias, are barely visible beneath the canopy of squatters and marauders in the form of a rambling rose and a bougainvillea that belongs on the pavement, and they need help. If it wasn’t for their fragrance, I would not have known they were flowering.

As much as I love the wild and unwieldy, this bunch of hooligans have gone too far, and I am going to have to enforce some boundaries. The thought occurred to me how often, when I am getting all the nutrients I need, and I’m comfortable with the abundance of a season, I neglect my relationship, first with God, and then with those around me.

As it is Earth Day, I took a look through the bible for some hints as to how I could regain my position as the laird of this bit of wilderness.

Genesis is a good place to start, I thought, with its description of how the earth began.

Chapter 1 v.11

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so.

The story continues through the creation of sea creatures, birds, and then land mammals and reptiles, and finally in verse 26:

Then God said, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27. so God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

28. then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

29. and God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed: to you it shall be for food.

30. also, to every beast of the earth to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food, and it was so.

What an amazing plan of eco-diversity and provision, the food chain for all living creatures is carefully and scientifically established, and we, as the pinnacle creation have the God-given responsibility of taking care of this wonderland.

Dominion is an interesting concept. It’s rulership, but rulership that comes with the responsibility of governing well. We have failed dismally to maintain the order we were given, we have gone our own way, treated this planet with utter contempt over the centuries, and are now reaping the wages of those rotten choices.

Thankfully, many in this generation have realised this, and there are many good initiatives throughout the world attempting to put right the environmental wrongs of our past. The work is slow and heartbreaking on occasion, but slowly the health of the planet is being clawed back.

There are also hints all throughout scripture as to how we are to manage our surroundings. A well-known passage is found in John 15, where Jesus talks about pruning.

Verse 2: every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

In Ruth we gain insight into how fields are managed, what is left as mulch, and what is left for the poor.  In many other places, we read of oxen, or men, ploughing fields, sheep being tended, we learn about the seasons, disease, so much that we can learn from these pages, systems all worked out in minute ecological order by a master Creator.

All we had to do was follow the Maker’s instructions.

As I look at my unruly garden, I see something of myself reflecting on me: when I am comfortable, in a place of no lack, I tend to think I can overstep the odd boundary here and there, that God won’t notice, He’s busy elsewhere. The truth is, God is never too busy not to notice what His children are up to, and if we are veering onto shaky ground, He sends the Gardener, in the person of the Holy Spirit to bring us back into line. A little hardship here, a hailstorm instead of gentle rainfall there, clever pruning to make sure the fruit is not impacted, but whatever it takes to make sure we flourish to the full potential He has put in each one of us.

It is with confidence that I plan the cutbacks, thinning outs, pruning that needs to happen these winter months if my garden is to be in the right state to welcome spring with gay but ordered abandon!

Happy Earth Day!