A Beautiful Garden

We live in a crowded older neighborhood in a city.  Our total lot is only 60 feet by 80 feet.  On that lot we have a house, a two stall garage and a large driveway that can accommodate four cars.  That doesn’t leave a lot of yard space.  But in our yard I have planted hundreds of flowers.  I have also planted four trees, three large decorative shrubs, two strawberry patches, two raspberry patches, two grape vines and various other flowering items for beauty and food. 

There is an old saying in Iowa, “You can take the boy out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy.”  I started working full time at age twelve managing my own truck farm. My love for digging in the dirt has never faded. 

Of all the things growing in my yard, I am fondest of the flowers.  They were planted to bring cheer from the first warm sun of spring to the last cold sun of fall.  The hyacinths, daffodils and tulips of early spring give way to iris, lilacs and peonies of late spring.  They are followed by a wide variety of lilies, roses and hostas in early summer, flox and late blooming hostas in late summer and asters and mums in the fall. Multiple other varieties of flowers are in bloom either all the time or in intervals between those mentioned.   From the time the snow is starting to separate itself from the edge of the house in the spring until the first snow lies on the ground in the fall, there is color in my yard and cut flowers for my beloved bride. 

My yard always makes me think of a hymn from the revivalist era. All week we have been considering the blessings that belong to the children of God and are found in and through His Word. Those blessings are as varied as the many thousands of different kinds of flowers and the many variations of each type of flower.  A flower catalog that listed each variety of each type of flower would be volumes in length.  That is the nature of the blessings of God to His children in and through His Word.  This hymn reflects the deep truth about the blessings that we find in our Bibles. They are as rich and rare as a beautiful garden and they exist in abundance.  “Thy Word is Like a Garden Lord” is the only recorded hymn by an Englishman named Edwin Hodder.  

Thy Word is like a garden, Lord, with flowers rich and fair;

And everyone who seeks may pluck a lovely cluster there.

Thy Word is like a deep, deep mine and jewels rich and rare

Are hidden in its mighty depths for every searcher there.  

  The Friday Benediction

Until Monday, my friends, may the good God envelop you with His grace; may you prove the common confession of faith, “I believe in the holy Christian church and in the fellowship of the saints”, and may you be enriched with joy and hope as you exercise that confession this weekend.  Amen

 

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