A GARDEN OF STORIES

[A Monday / Wednesday / Friday Devotional Feature of the First Road Blog]

I delight in professional flower gardens and professionally landscaped homes. They are beautiful and informative. However, when it comes to my own plant beds, my tastes are more intentionally amateurish. Of course it helps that I am not financially able to be “professional.” But, I’m not sure I would be if I could. I like my own garden to be more than beauty and information. I want it to be a collection of stories.

For example, we bought our red powder puff in a plant show at Bok Tower gardens in October of 2012. It and a fire bush, a beauty berry bush and a couple plumbagos were our first ventures into Florida-friendly plants. They started out small and unimpressive; but we nurtured them through some difficult times and watched them grow into prosperous bushes. There is nothing like a thriving plant with a story of obstacles overcome. I don't have space here to tell of plants brought back from near-death experiences! 

Then there are those plants born in our house. Last February I found some cardboard palm pods spilling their brilliant red seeds. I garnered some and planted them in a box. Weeks later, Judy and I were excited to find the first leafy spear had emerged like a coiled fern frond. Already I have a vision for their future.

If you ever stop by, be warned. I may tell you stories. And I may mention Jesus’ parable of the unfruitful fig tree. The owner was prepared to cut it down; but the caretaker intervened. The various plants on whose behalf I have labored remind me that every local church is a garden of individual plants each with a story of God's intervention. I suppose he could have been content with an angelic landscape; but he chose to make a garden of redeemed sinners with stories to tell. Some people think that’s a little strange, but I think I understand...at least a little.  

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Subdued Acres

Stretched along the east side of the Mississippi River in St. Cloud, Minnesota, are two glorious sanctuaries of natural color. Between the river and Riverside Drive a visitor walks circuitous lanes among a delicious chaos of flowers strewn in a variety of unpredictable settings. These are the Munsinger Gardens. On the other side of Riverside Drive are the Clemens Gardens where geometric walkways move deliberately from one collection of organized beauty to another.

Recently Judy and I visited these creations and left them, reluctantly, with a new appreciation for the word “subdued” in God’s first command to the father of the human race.

“Be fruitful and multiply...

fill the earth and subdue it...

 have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heaven

and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

The word is curious since it occurs prior to the disastrous effects of man’s rebellion and, yet, implies a disorder. In other words, although God created a perfect natural environment with healthy ecological balance wherever we might have looked, he did so in a way which required mankind to keep track of it and keep it functioning as it ought. At the same time, he designed it to provide an opportunity for mankind to demonstrate the image-of-God gift of creativity. The Munsinger/Clemens Gardens give intense examples of this creativity.

The Munsinger grounds are fractalian, adventuresome, surprising. They are an organized chaos designed to please the eye with rambling variety. 

The layout of the Clemens grounds, on the other hand, offer satisfying formality. 

Each produces its own version of “Wow!” Both evoke respect for their creators; and both renew a commitment within the soul of those who trust The Creator of all. A commitment to respect the gardening work he does within our own lives whether it be in times of apparent chaos or stretches of formal predictability.  

  

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