In the Garden
The first thing God did after speaking into existence the entire universe and everything in it was to plant a garden. “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.” (Genesis 2:8). I’m in awe at the juxtaposition of this. With phenomenal cosmic power God says, “Let there be” and out of nothing there “be” whatever He says. And yet, the next thing we know, this same God gets down on His knees in the dirt and plants some seeds.
God the Creator said, “Be fruitful and multiply” then put the man into the garden He planted. God is a God of purpose. Whatever is put into a garden has a purpose uniquely designed for it alone. Everything in a garden must reproduce after its own kind. An apple seed must produce apples. A grapevine makes only grapes. There is no hesitation in a tomato seed about whether it is to make tomatoes or not. It does not question what it has been made to be. Tomatoes have no self-doubt.
Just the same, our Father has fashioned each of us to be what we are to be and there is no changing that. Tomato seeds can’t become apple trees. And I can’t become you and you can’t become me. No one can successfully become anything other than what they were designed by God to be. In fact, it’s cruel to encourage it because nothing else is true. Nothing else will do. Anything else is a lie. Anything else is loss.
God is a God of potential. Jam-packed into a seed is an immeasurable amount of potential. One apple seed can make one tree with an average of three hundred apples on it per season, each with five seeds inside them. Fifteen hundred apple trees can be born from one seed in one harvest season. Each is capable of making their own fruit trees of three hundred apples with their five seeds inside. This is becoming a complicated math problem of exponential multiplication of fruit! It all started with the promise inside of just one seed. In the same way, you are who God made you to be and you have within you the predestined potential to bear much fruit.
Don’t feel it? It’s ok. It’s a mystery, isn’t it? God is a God of process. One small seed planted in the ground by the Gardener doesn’t look anything like what it will become one day. Covered in dirt and darkness and quiet, it trusts. It waits for the rain. The Creator sends it. It longs for the warmth of the sun. It senses it and sprouts. Eventually the plant will break ground and find the light it needs to grow. The seed has surrendered to the process and God has done His part. He has provided everything it needs, soil, sun, and rain. God the Gardener then tends the plant. He weeds and prunes. He protects. He patiently enjoys its growth and expectantly waits for fruit. The plant has joyfully become what it was made to be and God the Gardener loves His plant.
The man and woman were made in God’s image and in God’s Garden. Enter the snake who immediately questions their identity. He questions the Gardener. He questions the process. He lies. They listened. “Am I like God?” They doubted. “Is there another way?” The man and the woman aborted their God-given potential in the garden. We may marvel at the ease of which this happened but are we doing exactly that? Are we questioning our identity? The whispers that say we aren’t enough or that we don’t need God or that we can be something we’re not are out there. Are you listening to the lies?
Five thousand years after the man messed it up, a Man went back to a garden. The snake was watching and whispering but this Man, sweating blood, made right what the first man had made wrong. He knew His identity. He was Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. Anything else was a lie. Anything less would be loss. To reclaim the garden, to unite the family, to reproduce more sons and daughters, the Seed went into the ground and died. Three days later, He broke ground, the Rose of Sharon.
All your potential, once lost, can now be accessed by grafting to Jesus, the Vine. You don’t have to wonder who you are. You can know. You can grow. You have a unique design and purpose. You can trust yourself to the process and the care of your Father, the Good Gardener. You can be who He made you to be. You can be fruitful and multiply!
“So they will be called the trees of righteousness [strong and magnificent, distinguished for integrity, justice, and right standing with God], the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:3) AMP
