where are you in the garden?

 

"Contentment is essentially a matter of accepting from God's hand what He sends because we know that He is good and therfore it is good." -J.I. Packer

    What does it look like to embrace our actual life? Not endure, but embrace with thanksgiving and even joy? To not belittle the grief and trials with trite phrases or mantras but also to not meditate on the annoyances and hardships of life more than the goodness of God and the goodness in our actual lives.

    Because that's what we do, don't we? We meditate, ruminate, dwell in the things that frustrate us, how we wish things were different, what our spouse did, what our friend didn't do, how challenging our season is, the job we don't like, resentment over the demands of our life. 

    Life is not as it was meant to be. Of this we can be certain. But we also are living in God's kingdom coming, his love moving, his redemption active and present. We are living with God revealing himself to us in creation, in his image bearers, in his word, in our circumstances---even the very ones we bemoan.

    Of course, when it comes to complaining and dwelling on the negative I am the foremost perpetuator of this. As I like to say, I love a good wallow. A good wallow in self-pity, in what's wrong. Often, I am not even looking for things to get better. I just want to gripe and complain. But this morning, I read Deuteronomy 30:20 and was struck by the words found there.

"Choose life, that you may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him."

    What gain do I recieve in focusing on the negative, resisting the life God has given me, dwelling in the annoyances? I certainly don't gain more life. I don't gain more joy. I don't gain strength or freedom. It's quite the opposite. 

    And still there is something satisfying in it, isn't there? We think this complaining will give us something. Relief, perhaps. But really we are just denying ourselves life.

    I imagine someone in a small garden. The garden is their life and God is tending to this garden. He is giving them agency to tend to it, too. There are trees and flowers and bees buzzing and butterflies and birds singing and fruit growing. It's not perfect. There is work to be done and sometimes the seeds don't take and with each season there are plants dying, new ones to tend to. Some seasons the whole garden looks quite bare. But instead of tending to the garden, enjoying the harvest, noticing the beauty the person decides to dig a hole and sit in it. They don't see all that is happening above them, they only look at a wall of dirt. They don't see the birds building nests and the flowers blooming and they only get the fruit that falls from the trees and rolls into their little hole. The fruit was good on the tree and if it had been picked would be delicious. Sometimes a little tart, but still good for eating. But instead the person gets the bruised fruit and sinks deeper into the hole they've made for themselves. 

    This type of living, this type of perspective, leads to death. It certainly doesn't lead to life! And so how instead does God call us to live?

    All throughout scripture we are reminded to give thanks, to remember what God has done and trust in what he is doing, to not complain, to pray instead of worry, to learn contentment. 

    So I ask you, dear reader, where are you in the garden? Are you tending to the budding plants? Are you tilling the soil? Are you putting down seeds? Are you marveling in a bird's nest? Smelling the flowers? Sitting and looking at all that is there? Or are you in a small hole you've made, looking only at the dirt wall?

"Whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God's word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things [center your mind on them and implant them in your heart."

   Continually think on what is good. Continually center your mind on what is admirable, in what is true, in what is lovely. Implant that in your heart. Remember your God and who you serve---the one who loves to work redemption and is never far from you!