I wonder if God put Adam in the Garden to tend it because gardening, landscaping, and working with plants is one of the best ways to come up with spiritual applications for things.

Gardening isn’t something I enjoy.  Just put down grass and spray weedkiller and that’s my idea of a landscaping.  Although tulips are pretty.

In my limited understanding, there are two basic gardening tasks.  Trimming and purging.  Sometimes you just clip things back.  Like mowing grass, shaping bushes, pruning trees and branches.  And then there are the tasks that mean getting your hands dirty.  Pulling out dandelions, weeding, uprooting tree seedlings, and uh, weeding.

In my life there are things that can get out of hand if I’m not careful. If they’re not tended to, they’ll grow wild. In my own life, such a thing was my writing. Nothing wrong with it, but for many years writing engulfed me.  To the exclusion of many other things, such as having a life.  It also became a comfort for me when I was down.  I didn’t look to the Lord, I looked to my Word document.  So, I needed to trim it back and put it in its rightful place.  After all, unmowed lawns are great for meadows, but not so much for front yards.

There are also things that don’t just need kept up, but taken out.  Selfishness and greed are weeds of sin.  Those things can take a lifetime to get rid of.  Sort of like dandelions (you can symbolize any sin with dandelions…just try it).  You blow on a dandelion and Poof, the seeds are spread.  We all have sins that we’re just more prone to.  Worry is like that with me.  One little thing happens and I get fearful and suddenly the worry seeds spread all over!  When something comes up in my life that will cause me to grow fearful and not courageous in the Lord, I need to root that up right away.  Take it out.  Don’t just trim it back.  They make dandelion tools for gardeners that get into the soil and grab it out by the roots.  If you just cut it down, it will come right back next year.  Sins are the same way.

Just as people that have been gardening for years realize what’s a weed and what isn’t, maturity is just knowing what needs trimmed back and what needs uprooted.

Good thing we have the Master Gardener working on us.