The Garden

In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.
-James 1:21 (MSG)

The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
-Isaiah 58:11

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn bush will grow the pine tree, and instead of the briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord's renown, for an everlasting sign, which will not be destroyed.
-Isaiah 55:12-13

The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.
-Isaiah 51:3

Father,
Allow the soil of my soul to be a place that is fertile and receptive to all that you desire to plant in my heart. Tend it carefully and nurture all that has sprung up in me that is of you; that I may be a garden of your delight. Through Jesus. Amen.

You take care of the earth and water it, making it rich and fertile. The river of God has plenty of water; it provides a bountiful harvest of grain, for you have ordered it so. You drench the plowed ground with rain, melting the clods and leveling the ridges. You soften the earth with showers and bless its abundant crops. You crown the year with a bountiful harvest; even the hard pathways overflow with abundance. The grasslands of the wilderness become a lush pasture, and the hillsides blossom with joy.
-Psalm 65:9-12

When you meditate or abide in your quiet times of communion, you do not charge in and do something, like saying, "I will now be good and move mountains by my acts of faith." No, you water your garden, knowing that these ideas are growing into a heavenly garden; the indwelling spirit doeth the work, not you: you merely water it. Do you not see the comfort there is in that? I can tell you in a primer language that a very gentle, calm, unemotional, selfless, and patient attitude toward your spiritual growth is essential- such as all old gardeners know. They know that patience, hoeing, watering, and certain order, a quiet rhythm, bring a heavenly beauty.
-Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood

I find you there in all these things
I care for like a brother.
A seed, you nestle in the smallest of them,
and in the huge ones spread yourself hugely.

Such is the amazing play of powers:
they give themselves so willingly,
swelling in the roots, thinning as the trunks rise,
and in the high leaves, resurrection.
-Book of Hours by Rainer Maria Rilke

Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of invisible and visible winged seeds, so the stream of time brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of the unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them: for such seeds as these can not spring up anywhere except in the good soil of liberty and desire.
The mind that is the prisoner of its own pleasure and the will that is the captive of its own desire cannot accept the seeds of a higher pleasure and a supernatural desire.
For how can I receive the seeds of freedom if I am in love with slavery and how can I cherish the desire of God if I am filled with another and opposite desire? God will not plant His liberty in me because I am a prisoner and I do not even desire to be free. I love my captivity and I lock myself in the desire for things that i hate, and I have hardened my heart against true love.
-Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton

He said I caught the point of the third soil right on the head! It was full of weeds and thorns...I guess he meant that often our lives are strangled by things that don't matter ultimately- he often referred to people who dwelt in this state of mind as "nit-pickers!" He felt that more people lost the joy of their faith in God because of pet attitudes of nonsense! That always strangles life and love....
.... He kept tantalizing me to try to find the deepest lesson of the parable...it finally hit me: All the soils were in the same field! He slapped my knee and threw his head back with a hearty laugh.... My life is a blend of many responses to God- busy in solid service but like a hustling cook sometimes hungry over a full kettle...living in a shallow artificial faith at times...overly concerned at times with things that don't matter ultimately...and-like now- warm and fertile soil, productive, responsive to his bidding.
-The Gospel According to Norton by Grady Nutt

Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you- you of little faith!
-Luke 12-27-28