by Cheri Hart
When I was a girl, my parents would pack up the station wagon each summer and take my two younger brothers and me for month-long visits to see our grandparents living in eastern Canada. The trip involved a very long two-day drive each way as I shared the back seat with two active boys. Mom would occasionally need to dive over the front seat to reach them. Back then, divided highways were rare going through Canada so we drove mostly on back roads and Dad would gun it to pass cars in single lane traffic. Mom was known to go faster. It was a sigh of relief when we all stumbled out of the car.
Both sets of my grandparents lived within a few miles of each other, and we’d evenly split time between them. Days were spent visiting relatives in old country houses with pump organs in the parlors, walking through ancestral graveyards next to country churches, picking wild blueberries and strawberries in the fields and attending Sunday church services. We explored attics filled with antiques, fished for brook trout in small streams under covered bridges and generally used our imaginations outdoors during the rest of the time.
When we arrived mid-summer, nature was in full bloom and the landscape rich in color and fragrance. It was especially so at my grandparents’ homes. Both had different, yet magnificent types of gardens. Mom’s parents had an enormous vegetable garden filled with organic potatoes, carrots, green and yellow beans, beets, tomatoes and garden peas which provided sustenance year-round. Dinners each night featured bowls filled with freshly picked produce. There was always enough extra for Grandpa to give generously to neighbors in need.
Dad’s parents cultivated charming flower gardens which surrounded around their entire home featuring pansies, salvia, sweet william, petunias, peonies, lilacs, hydrangeas, roses and more. The fragrance was lovely, and the textures and colors were beautiful. People would drive by just to look. Two different gardens cultivated by diligent work, bountiful and blossoming, weathered by different seasons, and filled with love.
Similarly, our lives, deep in our souls, require cultivation to bloom and flourish like a garden before God. In Isaiah 58:11 God refers to His people as like a garden saying, “and you shall be like a well-watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” Later, Paul tells us God is the one who makes things grow. In I Corinthians 3:7 he says, “So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” God is working in our lives to make us flourish and grow. It’s not about our efforts, it’s about His.
He is our Master Gardener and responsible for the cultivation of our souls. He waters our roots of resilience and cultivates seeds of potential. His hands mold our character. His wisdom prunes out the unnecessary. His care nurtures growth. He bathes each bloom in the sunlight of His love, and in His presence, is the richest soil for our spirits to flourish. We’ll experience many challenges, hardships, uncertainties, joys, disappointments, pain, anxiety, and times when we feel dormant or far from Him. But, we can rest assured and know He is at work in everything. British pastor, Charles Spurgeon, said, “He (God) who begins the good work carries it on. He who imparts the first germ of life in the dead soul, prolongs the divine existence, and strengthens it until it bursts asunder every bond of sin, and the soul leaps from earth, perfected in glory.”
Author and minister, Henry van Dyke, writing words for the hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” penned, “…Hearts unfold like flowers before Him, Opening to the sun above…” Think of our souls unfolding like flowers before God. Imagine Him walking through our soul garden cradling a bloom with His hands, touching the petals, and leaning over to smell a sweet fragrance that is beautiful to Him because of His care in our lives.
Let’s embrace and yield to God who works through each season and situation of our lives – growing and maturing us and bringing forth sweet, fragrant, and beautiful blooms. My grandparents’ gardens are long gone and only a cherished memory, but the gardening of my soul, well, those blooms will live forever.
Cheri Hart – Bio
Cheri is happily retired with her husband, John. They have two children and one son-in-law. Cheri attended Michigan State University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in communication. Her communication background provided opportunities that included newspaper advertising, healthcare marketing, and a call to serve on her church’s pastoral team overseeing ministry to children for 15 years. She recently retired from Mayo Clinic after serving in a variety of communication positions, including fundraising and benefactor recognition. Cheri enjoys trips to rocky shores like Maine and Lake Superior, vintage boat rides, reading, walks, catching up with friends and is learning to master the art of baking cakes.
1 thought on “Soul gardens: a devotional”
This is beautiful Cheri! Thank you!