Beauty surrounds us, but we usually need to be walking in a garden to know it - Rumi
The garden looks a mess at the moment. The lads have laid the paths and scraped off the old lawn but have still to lay the new turves. The birds are quite unconcerned by the mess, they are just happy that someone has turned the ground over to reveal more bugs and insects for them to eat. They are not worried, indeed do not realise, that the garden does not look as neat and tidy as it will eventually be, and as we want it to be.
Are our lives like that sometimes? Are we quite happy so long as there is food on the table and enough to get by? Are we happy just plodding along as we have always done? After all, the poor are always with us and people have been refugees for as long as time itself. Adam and his wife were cast out of the Garden of Eden - surely they were the first refugees, the first to be made homeless. Anyway, what can we do about it? There will always be some “do-gooder” somewhere to take care of them, so let them get on with it. We can send a donation to a charity if it will salve our conscience but what more can we do? There is too much else going on in our busy lives to worry too much about refugees in a far off land. But for all that are we happy with our lives? Is there something missing? Oh, God you mean? Well, there are enough “God botherers” out there already wearing out the knees of their trousers and some of them have some very peculiar ideas. Do we really want to get into all that? Of course, our lives do not need to be like that. The darkness of the night does not last forever, there is always light that follows. This weekend we remembered the death of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour, the darkness of Good Friday and the horrible blackness of Holy Saturday that followed. And yet yesterday we celebrated His Resurrection. Christ is risen!! That very fact gives meaning to our lives. God is not dead, He is with us now, as He always has been, and will never leave nor forsake us. We simply need to Ask, Seek and Knock to receive a fuller, richer, more fulfilling life with God. When I wrote last week I wondered if this was the right time to sort out the garden. Now I think the Easter message illustrates that it was. After looking like a bomb site for a week, by the time I next write the garden will be a safer, more comfortable, more welcoming place. We will be able to sit out there without having to prop up the leg of the table, whilst Mr Robin will still be able to enjoy all the bugs and insects he can dig up. Christ is risen! Christ is with us - and will never leave us! Thanks be to God
6 Comments
Steve Givens
17/4/2017 03:27:06 pm
Beautiful post-Easter thoughts...The world is a mess of a garden, to be sure, but it has always been thus. It's where the living and the dying all take place, and that's rarely a pretty sight...
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17/4/2017 07:40:47 pm
I just finished roto-tilling the garden and planted green beans, peas, swiss chard, brussel sprouts and parsnips. We are already getting spinach. It is God's gift to be able to plant and water and care for the food that God gives us. The planting of seeds and their growing above the ground are also evidence of resurrection.
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Peter
18/4/2017 10:05:39 am
True Steve but it is up to us to make it a better place, with God's help, of course.
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AuthorI am an Authorised Local Preacher in an Anglo Catholic parish church, in the Diocese of Essex UK Archives
February 2022
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