Gardening and our participation with God

Last week, I walked up the hill from the garden, clutching produce in my fist. “Look!” I shook the vegetables toward Justin, showing him my kale and lettuce and spinach, “I grew this!” Justin laughed and jokingly responded, “You mean, God grew that, right?” 

We were both right. 

Life of any sort is a mystery. We “know” how seeds grow; my first-grader learned this. But we don’t actually understand it. God does a deep work in the world, far beyond what we could do. And yet, God invites our participation. He designed the world in a way that expects it. 

A few months ago, I was sharing a burden about one of my kids with Kristin. She reminded me that maybe I was the way that God was taking care of that child. It was time for me to quit worrying that God wouldn’t take care of him, because clearly God was partnering with me to do just that. 

I grew up believing that people got credit for nothing. If you did something, you immediately deflected attention. Well, glory to God. And yes, absolutely, GLORY TO GOD. May that be the marker of our whole lives. But God has never set up the world to run without humanity. Sometimes, God intervenes free of human mediation, but that’s the exception, not the rule. The rule is that God wants to partner with people. 

God created earth and He neither set it up to run on its own or grasped for control over every detail. Instead, He put humans in the garden to represent Him and continue His work. When sin entered the story and God was going to continue bringing creation back to His purposes, He partnered with a family, starting with Abraham and Sarah. He brought Israel out of Egypt by partnering with Moses. He saved Moses as a baby through the work of Jochebed, Miriam, and Pharaoh’s daughter. He reminded the people of what He required through the prophets; voices didn’t just thunder from the sky. 

Even when God came to rescue the world, He didn’t come just as God, a disembodied Spirit with all power, surpassing limitations. Even then, God came as a human too. And that same God went back to heaven, leaving the work of the kingdom to humans. Humans empowered by God’s Spirit, yes; but that Spirit does not turn people in heavenly puppets. Humans have agency and participation in this mission. 

Yes, God makes seeds grow. But I wouldn’t have carried that kale, lettuce, and spinach up the hill and eaten it with my dinner if I hadn’t have finished hours of work cleaning out the garden beds, planting seeds, watering and weeding the beds.

Sometimes we look around and wonder, “God, where on earth are you in this mess?” And where He is working in the mess is in His people. We cannot fix the world, but we can probably participate in some small part in our own communities. And if everyone did that, well, life might be a little different. 

*Are even our best attempts also going to mess things up? Yes, yes, they are, but that is not the purpose of this reflection. That’s a thought for another time.