Seeking Paradise in a Hostile World?

I’ve just come face-to-face with a new garden invader, a creepy worm that ruins soil health and burns on contact (trust me). To measure it, I gently tugged on its tail end with a gloved hand, but it split into three pieces. I shuddered when I read that those parts will each become an entire new worm. Yikes! I’d contributed to the destruction of earth and thus dissolved my last illusion of the garden as paradise.

Without the promise of paradise in a hostile world—the eventuality of beauty, peace, and joy—how do we get up every morning, face another day of friction, to sow seeds? Can we believe in paradise with Christ when he returns? He said we need not be upended by life’s troubles, as they cannot keep us from true shalom (John 16:33).

Nature lovers know that life is a repeating cycle of deathfollowed by rebirth, then flourishing. Only in my vulnerability to this cycle, waiting breathlessly for what’s languishing to regenerate, am I still passionate about tending and cultivating despite certain decay. The more opposition I experience as a grower makes life itself (let alone paradise) seem improbable, but my determination grows despite the opposition.

My drive to cultivate, beautify, and celebrate life grows in proportion to the time spent up close and personal withdecaying organic matter, watching life resurrect. Creation is under our watch, however negatively it’s impacted by our pride and ignorance. It’s my intimacy with nature that prompts me to tell others what I’ve gleaned, like the narratives of rebirth, restoration, and relationship in nature and what they reveal of God’s heart. I urge you to open your senses and spirit wide to God’s heart in nature. Consider the parables Christ Jesus used to bring home deep truths. Pray walking. Sit in a place of beauty—or desolation—as Jesus often did. Ask God to speak, then listen.

What does sharing the good news of God’s redemption look like in the language of gardening? Of outdoor adventuring? How can the landscape of your life speak biblical truths without written words?

God, your words are my peace and strength amid troubles. They are like blooms that reliably burst open on the heels of winter. Sow them in me so I may remain in you through Christ your Son. Amen.