Isn’t it wonderful how our gardens come alive in April! New buds, new green, new life. So a tale of two gardens, with two trees, and two choices.
The first garden? Mythical Eden, the perfect paradise – until the tears, that is. The tree? Befitting paradise, it bears its enticing knowledge-of-good-and-evil fruit. But the golden fruit, it turns out, complicates life more than we can handle. The choice? We opt to take our life in our own hands – what could possibly go wrong?
The second garden? Gethsemane, late one foreboding Middle Eastern night – the garden of God’s tears. The tree? An ancient gnarled olive where a man kneels beneath, weeping. The choice? He offers his life into the hands of Another – “thy will be done,” he cries into the darkness. But what could conceivably go right, in the face of such crushing odds?
The story twists, and there’s a third garden, on the third day. No tree but a tomb. And the tomb does this garden proud! For from ground watered with the tears of God and of humankind bursts forth miraculous new life. The man steps out from the tomb, and the garden blooms with joy.
“An Englishman’s home is his castle,” we quoted last month – but an Englishman’s castle is not complete without its English garden. Stately-home or Barratt-home, how we need our gardens. They mark our seasons, and watch our coming and going. They take our hopeful plant-growing efforts, and reward us with colour and delight (and a sprinkle of weeds for company).
“Thy will be done,” we ask of Nature as we plant those seeds, “…but please help them grow well!” “Thy will be done,” we pray on automatic, “…but I don’t truly mean it, for you know what I really want is my nearest to be well again” “Thy will be done?” we stutter, angry and confused at a world where evil’s will appears to prevail.
But then we stop, and breathe. We breathe, and remember – and relax a little. For we’ve remembered what can happen when life is held in the hands of Another, even against the worst of odds. We remember which garden guides our story now – that garden of resurrection. Tears may have watered the ground, but new life has a miraculous habit of walking out of the tomb.
