The GardenReader: Jon WatsonDate: 7th December 2022Passage: Genesis 2:8-------------------As someone who likes gardening I find it interesting to see other gardens and how other gardeners plant and lay out the gardens they have. I am interested too in the different references to gardens that we find in the Bible.The first reference in the Bible to a garden is of course to the garden of Eden which we are told God planted. In this garden he placed Adam to be his gardener. It must have been a beautiful place to work in with all kinds of plants and a fruitful orchard as well. It was also a well-watered place so it had all the makings of something very beautiful. Sadly we know what happened as Adam sinned and was expelled from the garden. And that sin has marred all of us since then. The Old Testament people of God were described by Isaiah the prophet as a garden without water (Isaiah 1:30) because they stopped doing what God wanted them to do.In my own garden there are plenty of weeds, plenty of slugs and snails which spoil the plants and lots of other things which tend to spoil what I want to have as a beautiful space. It's kind of like the lives we live — we keep so many 'weeds' in our minds and hearts, sinful things that make us very unlike what God meant us to be in the beginning. Our Lord Jesus Christ went to a garden, Gethsemane, the night before he was put to death and there in the garden he was in agony in his soul as he knew the terrible cost he was to pay to take away the sinful weeds in the hearts and minds of his people. Only Christ can make our lives clean and beautiful again like a well-watered garden.

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