The Garden

The Garden

How are your gardening skills?

 God likes gardens.

And He likes to see lots of fruit.

Will you be His gardener?

  

 My grandparents owned a flower shop

and my mother, who was very artistic,

designed beautiful floral arrangements.

So I have an appreciation for flowers,

but I have not been able to get the results

from my gardens that I had looked for.

Gardens take work and understanding

in order to see the beauty

and taste the fruit.

When God created the earth,

He chose a place in the earth

to have a garden.

The garden had trees that were pleasant to look at

and plants that produced wonderful fruit.

God gave Adam the responsibility

of caring for His garden.

When God saw it was too much for him to handle,

He made Eve to help him

and bring out the feminine qualities in the garden.

Their reward for caring for the garden

was freedom to enjoy any of the garden’s produce.

But, there was one exception!

One tree called,

the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God intended for Adam and Eve

to have responsibilities.

We can sometimes get the idea that gardens

or the earth

was made for man.

But God made the earth and His garden first,

before He made man.

God could have cared for it Himself,

but He gave that responsibility

to Adam and Eve.

It was Adam and Eve’s glory and joy

to see God enjoy His garden

because they did a good job of keeping it.

Work and responsibility were something God

required before the fall.

Although we cannot enter the Garden of Eden,

God still gives us the responsibility

and work of making things grow.

You and I are still

God’s Gardeners.

It is His desire that you

produce much fruit.

So what do we need to water or plant today?  

  Scripture Reading

Genesis 2:8-20 NIV

8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden;

and there he put the man he had formed.

9 And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground

— trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food.

In the middle of the garden were the tree of life

and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 A river watering the garden flowed from Eden;

from there it was separated into four headwaters.

11 The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah,

where there is gold.

12(The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.)

13 The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush.   14 The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur.

And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

15 The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it

and take care of it.

16 And the LORD God commanded the man,

"You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;

17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,

for when you eat of it you will surely die."

18 The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone.

I will make a helper suitable for him."

19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground

all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air.

He brought them to the man to see what he would name them;

and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.

20 So the man gave names to all the livestock,

the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.