In the studio: The Gardener Loves

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener." 
 (John 15:1)

In the studio I have been continuing on my thoughts of processes and who the Father is, this time focusing on God as The Gardener.  Until a few weeks ago I only appreciated gardening from afar, enjoying flowers that other people had planted and reading about plant life cycles in books as investigation for some art work I wanted to make.  A few weeks ago this changed as I felt prompted to weed the garden and soon found that I actually really enjoyed it!

I feel I have learnt a lot through taking up gardening.  I have greatly increased my knowledge of plants - not hard if you know next to nothing when you first start!  But I also feel like I have learnt quite a lot about God along the way.  I have carried these thoughts from the garden into the studio and have begun expressing them with paint.  The above images will give you a little taste of this.  Despite only picking up gardening recently, I have felt God speak to me through gardening imagery in the past.  Since I have begun physically gardening I have felt him speak to me through these processes even more.  I feel like I have started to know God as The Gardener and I would like to share with you some of The Gardener's qualities that I have come to recognise over the next few blog posts.  Reading these will also shed some light on the thoughts behind my current studio work.

Seeing God as The Gardener began around the new year.  I was listening to a song by Gungor called Beautiful Things and I felt strongly that God was speaking to me through it.  At the time I had been working on a series of paintings about The Potter and the words of the song reminded me of these paintings as the potter takes dust (clay) and makes beautiful things with it.  My thoughts developed as time went on and as I read various scriptures.  This is how I was first properly introduced to God as The Gardener.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness.  And the Spirit of God was hovering over it's surface.  Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light."  (Genesis 1:1-3)

The first point I would like to make about The Gardener is that he can create life from nothing.  This is where God is very different to us!  When it comes to gardening we can 'start from scratch' but this usually means heading to a shop and buying seeds and materials; we cannot make something from nothing, we can only use what God has already created.  However, when God goes to work, sometimes he uses that which he has already created, but he is also able to make something completely new, he can speak something out of nothing!  He is both creative and powerful.

"Then God said "Let the land burst forth with every sort of grass and seed-bearing plant.  And let there be trees that grow seed-bearing fruit.  The seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came."  And so it was.  The land was filled with seed-bearing plants and trees, and their seeds produced plants and trees of like kind.  And God saw that it was good."  (Genesis 1:11-12)

You don't have to search very far into the Bible to see God as the Gardener, the above passage comes from the first chapter of the first book.  One of the key qualities about The Gardener that I have come to realise is that he loves life.  You can see this from the very beginning as God chose to make the earth and fill it with life.  He did not only plan for the earth to hold the life he first created, he planned for the life he first made to reproduce and create more life.  He wanted life to grow and continue on.

Anyone familiar with the Bible will know what happened shortly after creation; the fall.  God created man and gave him free will and man chose to go against God.  This resulted in death.  We read that the land was also changed because of Adam's choice:

"And to Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate the fruit I told you not to eat, I have placed a curse on the ground.  All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.  It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains.  All your life you will sweat to produce food, until your dying day.  Then you will return to the ground from which you came.  For you were made from dust, and to the dust you will return."  
(Genesis 3:17-19)

Man's choice resulted in more than one type of death.  It resulted in physical death as God said they would eventually return to the ground from which they came. It also resulted in spiritual death as they had to leave the garden and could no longer walk intimately with God in the way they had done up to that point.  He did continue to have a relationship with his creation and we know this because we can read about many people in the old testament and see that he spoke to them and continued to care for and guide them.  However, the relationship between God and his people changed as sacrifices and mediators became necessary.  Sin had entered and grown up like a hedge of thorns, limiting the level of intimacy which he could have with God.  Even Moses who was called God's friend, was more humble than anyone else on earth and was entrusted with God's entire house could not look upon the Lord's face as it would kill him.  The contrast being that before the fall, God walked in the same Garden as Adam and they spoke freely.  I think we can conclude that after the fall, God still cared for and had a relationship with his people, but like the ground, it became hard to maintain and had to be worked at.  


What started out as beautiful and perfect begins to look a little hopeless.  With all the sacrifices and work strict rules of the priests it begins to look like there is more effort on creations part than God's part to maintain the relationship.  When man fell and the thorns grew, did it become too hard for God?  Did The Gardener give up?  I would say the answer is quite the opposite and this brings us to the next point:  The Gardener Redeems.

"The Lord will comfort Israel again and make her deserts blossom.  Her barren wilderness will become as beautiful as Eden - the garden of the Lord.  Joy and gladness will be found there.  Lovely songs of thanksgiving will fill the air."  (Isaiah 51:3)

Sometimes gardening is easy.  In some ways it's easy to start with nothing, if that means an empty plot with no weeds and nothing to hinder or get in the way of what you choose to plant there.  But what if the starting plot is a barren wilderness or is an overgrown jungle - full of weeds and pests and things that shouldn't be there?  What if something already exists and must be removed before something good can grow there?  I believe God is the kind of Gardener who is willing to do the hard work.  

"The law of Moses could not save us, because of our sinful nature.  But God put into effect a different plan to save us.  He sent his own Son in a human body like ours, except that ours are sinful.  God destroyed sin's control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins."  (Romans 8:3)

God had a plan.  He sent Jesus to pay the ultimate sacrifice for us and this put an end to the mediators and sacrifices required by the law of Moses.  Jesus bridged the gap between God and man and because of him we are able to have an intimate, personal relationship with God once again.  God's love for life, God's love for us outweighed the power of sin and death.  What Paul writes in Romans 8 is certainly true:

"And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love.  Death can't, and life can't.  The angels can't, and the demons can't.  Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of hell can't keep God's love away."  (Romans 8:38)

When Jesus was born, it was similar to the creation of the world as both instances brought life. 

"The thief's purpose is to steal and kill and destroy.  My purpose is to give life in all it's fullness." 
 (John 10:10)

"Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one can come to the Father except through me.  
 (John 14:6)

The main difference is that in the beginning, there was no sin.  There was nothing already in place and nothing that needed to be removed.  You could think of it as the perfect starting plot - full of nothing but potential.  When Jesus was born into the world it was different as it was after the fall.  Yes he came to bring life, but he did not do this in the same way as in the beginning.  This time he did not simply speak something from nothing, he worked with what was already in place.  It is as if the garden that was once so beautiful and perfect had become overrun with weeds, thorns and pests.  He could have abandoned the garden, given up on it or even destroyed it, but instead he chose to redeem it.

He came to Earth and he gave his life for us.  In dying he removed the stain of sin from us, he uprooted it from our lives.  He defeated death and he broke the power of sin that had a hold over us.  It wasn't an easy job, it cost him everything.  Yet despite this he submitted to God's will and completed the work set out before him.

Jesus restored to us what was lost when man left Eden.  He offers spiritual life; right standing with God where we can freely approach him and have a personal, intimate relationship with him once again.   He offers us eternal life where we can reign in Heaven with him after our time on this earth passes.

You may feel like a forgotten garden, overrun with weeds and pests.  The good news for you is that God has not forgotten you.  He has already done everything necessary for you to have life, and life in all it's fullness.   He has uprooted sin's power, defeated the pests that steal from us and kill the good things that grow in us and he has victory over the grave.  He just needs to be invited in and he will gladly get to work!  Perhaps you look at your life and see that it's not overrun with bad things but there doesn't seem to be a lot of good in it either - maybe it seems empty and lifeless.  The good news for you is that God speaks life and he can speak life into your situation.  God is a skilled gardener; he can make something from scratch and he also works with what is already in place.  The Gardener loves life.