The Church In My Garden

Around my house is a thriving, somewhat over-exuberant, garden. Once it was all pine bark chips over black plastic with spindly, sickly looking sticks with leaves in something that pretended to be soil, with a PH level approaching that of caustic soda. It was not a garden, it was not happy, and it was definitely not thriving.

It had not been designed to thrive, but simply to suppress weeds and grass. But a garden, like a church, is about life and cannot thrive if in the desire for control you suppress the very things that bring life to it. The secret to a thriving garden is not control, but a gardener who, waters, feeds, protects and nurtures each of the god given lives in it. Even pruning is not about control but the health and wellbeing of the plant.

First I released the plants from the shackles of pine bark, plastic, and a growth destroying alkaline environment. Then I fed and watered them, giving them the freedom and  resources to do what they had wanted to do all along - to grow and thrive.

And I have added to them. Some are brought at great price. Some rescued from sure death elsewhere. Others are the offspring of distant gardens, or blow-ins and grow-ins from next door, and still others are born here. Some have been moved several times in search of the place where they will thrive rather than struggle. And it is all natural and organic. They grow and thrive as God intended them to grow and thrive. Each free to be what God made them to be.  And as they are freed and encouraged do all this the most amazing things happen.

For instance you do not have to control weeds much at all. Once thriving your plants will do that. The bigger, stronger plants shelter and protect the smaller ones. They even help feed those whose roots cannot reach the deeper places by providing leaves and fruits as nutrition for all. And just by each one being as God intended them to be and rejoicing in it together they become a beautiful and refreshing place to be in.

D.J. Ludlow

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