faith and work on Gardens

God’s garden, made “in the beginning,” does not lie behind us, but ahead of us, in hope, and, in the meantime, all around us as our place of work. History without gardens would be a wasteland. What th...

The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Withou...

Even the richest soil, if left uncultivated will produce the rankest weeds.

[A gardener cultivates soil more than plants.] He lives buried in the ground. He builds his monument in a heap of compost. If he came into the Garden of Eden he would sniff excitedly and say: ‘Good Lo...

If we are to be God’s image-bearers with regard to creation, then we will carry on his pattern of work. His world is not hostile, so that it needs to be beaten down like an enemy. Rather, its potentia...

The green oasis, the little grassy meadow in the wilderness, where, after the week-day’s journey, the pilgrim halts for refreshment and repose.

We say that Nature rests, yet she is working like mad. She has only shut up shop and pulled the shutters down; but behind them she is unpacking new goods, and the shelves are becoming so full that the...

One of my favorite sections of Home Depot is the power garden tool department. Even though I have all the tools I need, I still like browsing through Home Depot’s collection of power mowers, chainsaws...

Good farmers, who take seriously their duties as stewards of Creation and of their land's inheritors, contribute to the welfare of society in more ways than society usually acknowledges, or even k...

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

The Sabbath is the link between the paradise which has passed away and the paradise which is yet to come.

Let the vineyards be fruitful, Lord, and fill to the brim our cup of blessing. Gather a harvest from the seeds that were sown, that we may be fed with the bread of life. Gather the hopes and dreams of...

He who plants kindness gathers love.

Overall, from a biblical perspective, the sustained fertility and habitability of the earth, or more particularly of the land of Israel, is the best index of the health of the covenant relationship. W...

The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experienc...

If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees. If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people.

We cannot abandon the soil for the microwave.

O gracious Father, who opens your hand and fills all living things with abundance: Bless the lands and waters, and multiply the harvests of the world; send your Spirit into the world, that it may rene...

The story is told of a farmer in a Midwestern state who had a strong disdain for “religious” things. As he plowed his field on Sunday morning, he would shake his fist at the church people who passed b...

Sometimes when a farmer is looking for a suitable spot in which to plant a tree, he unexpectedly comes across a treasure. Something similar may happen to the seeker after God.

The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn'...

Though he works and worries, the farmer never reaches down to where the seed turns into summer. The earth grants.

Like a path through the forest, Sabbath creates a marker for ourselves so, if we are lost, we can find our way back to our center.

When a man's pride is subdued it's like the sides of Mount Aetna. It was terrible during the eruption, but when that is over and the lava is turned into soil, there are vineyards and olive tre...

There once lived a peasant in Crete who deeply loved his life. He enjoyed tilling the soil, feeling the warm sun on his naked back as he worked the fields, and feeling the soil under his feet. He love...

If you see a thing whole—it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life is a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You ne...

The inordinate desire in the west to increase productivity, to go faster and faster, especially in business, can actually become counterproductive. In this short story from the Chinese philosopher Men...

My first call to ministry was in Eastern Washington state. It turned out to be one of the most prolific winemaking regions in the country. One of the things I learned from a local winery was really qu...

I feel as if God had, by giving the Sabbath, given fifty-two springs in each year.

When the LORD restored the fortunes of _______, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the people, "The ...