Laboring Grace in the Garden

Pastor Randy Booth

In a sinful and fallen world God has given us a remnant of Paradise—the redemptive community that is called the Church. This garden is a gracious gift of God to His people. Like the Garden of Eden, God has placed man in the garden and told him to tend and cultivate it—to love it and make it fruitful. A garden demand hard work if it is to be productive and beautiful. It will not tend itself, nor can it. C. S. Lewis wrote:

It is not disparagement to a garden to say that it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns.  A garden is a good thing but that is not the sort of goodness it has.  It will remain a garden, as distinct from a wilderness, only if someone does all these things to it.  Its real glory is of quite a different kind.  The very fact that it needs constant weeding and pruning bears witness to that glory.  It teems with life.  It glows with color and smells like heaven and puts forward at every hour of a summer day beauties which man could never have created and could not even, on his own resources, have imagined. (The Four Loves)

Similarly, Paul likened the Church to a household—this also demands our work.  Jesus spoke of the kingdom like a wheat field, a sheepfold, and a vineyard.  All of these images set before our eyes the grace of God toward His people, a duty of diligence in their care, and promise of bounty. The work of cultivation is before us; the hard work of laboring grace. The promise of a full harvest is to those who are diligent in this calling.

[Garden]