5Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there and do not decrease. 7But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare—Jeremiah 29:5–7.
One of the things Jeremiah tells the exiles in Babylon to do is to plant gardens.
Have you ever wondered why God would ask him do that?
As a gardener I can tell you that there’s something sacred about tending the Earth, breaking a sweat as you toil to prepare the soil, planting seeds, and tending to them as they grow.
When we get the soil of a place under our fingernails, it’s hard not forge a connection with the place where we are. We become rooted and grounded in the place where we garden—even if we’re far from the place we call home.
According to Genesis 1 human life began in a Garden, and according to John 20, new life emerged from a Garden Tomb on Easter. Maybe this is why, when all else is in turmoil, we tend to come back to our gardens. During the First and Second World Wars, people in various countries planted Victory Gardens. They served a practical purpose in that they provided food for the family; but they also made people feel as if they were making a tangible contribution to the war effort. I have to wonder if the exiles felt the same way as they planted gardens in Babylon—even as they simultaneously wept for what they had lost back in Jerusalem (Psalm 137:1).
We find ourselves in a time of turmoil now, cut off from the world we knew “before COVID-19” and not sure what the world will be like after this. Interestingly enough, in the midst of a global pandemic, some are planting gardens again—with both practical and prophetic purpose.
This past Wednesday was the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day. NASA images provide unique views of our world from the vantage point of space. The iconic 1968 Earthrise image taken by the Astronauts aboard Apollo 8 increased our awareness that there is but one Earth, and we’re all on it together, and led to the first Earth Day in 1970. Since then, we’ve learned so much more about the planet we call home, how it is changing, and what the consequences may be for all of us on spaceship Earth.
As we each work to make our little corner of creation a bit more beautiful and good, we make a contribution to the common good of the Earth. To paraphrase the Weeping Prophet, we realize that in our home planet’s welfare we find our own welfare. As we cultivate gardens of goodness in our time and place, we join a long tradition of good-gardeners dating back to the tenants of the first Garden in Genesis 1, and we fulfill our Creators mandate to be caretakers of Creation, and to exercise just dominion over all that God has given us.
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