Steve Maraboli, an American author once remarked: “Accept yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, your truths, and know what tools you have to fulfil your purpose.” Deuteronomy 19:5 confirms: “For instance, a man may go into the forest with his neighbour to cut wood, and as he swings his axe to fell a tree, the head may fly off and hit his neighbour and kill him. That man may flee to one of these cities and save his life.”
Tools are defined as a device or implement, especially one held in the hand, used to carry out a particular function. They may take many different forms and can be mechanical or electrical. They are usually considered as a valuable asset if used correctly and for the intended purpose. For many aspects of life, they are essential in providing the necessary workforce to achieve a particular goal or effect.
God in His divine wisdom, may often nurture us to perform His intended works. He can furnish the necessary tools for us to function to the best effect in our Christian lives. Irrespective of our own personal qualities or traits, God will often provide everything needed to allow us to achieve amazing feats to His glory.
God can provide the necessary tools, through speech or thought patterns to communicate directly with Him by personal prayer whenever we feel the need, or while attending church. His door is always open to listen to our comments or pleas for help. He will often use our hands to help others, our mouths to provide words of comfort, or our minds to ascertain the correct action. Hebrews 13:6 reminds us: “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”
Above all, we need to practice what we preach, and do unto others what we hope that they would do unto us. James 2:14-17 confirms: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
Some people in life are said to have “Green Fingers.” This primarily relates to a natural ability to grow plants well. It usually includes a primitive love of everything to do with gardening and the reward gleaned from the endless nurturing and attention given. Genesis 2:8-9 reminds us: “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”
Many are proud to possess and present a beautiful garden that reveals all the hard work and time spent over probably several months of intense activity. Proverbs 12:11 reminds us: “Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.”
There is a similarity in life between the attention and care given to a beautiful garden, and a life with God, together with the rewards that He can provide for us in return.
It is never a singular relationship, it is a two-way encounter. Just as we are taught, learn and are advised as to the correct way to cultivate our garden, by experts, to attain the best effects by pruning, adding additional items, removing unwanted items, watering, nourishing and the like, so God can effect the same accoutrements in our lives.
Everybody needs tools in life to work with. They can often be used for the purposes of guidance or perhaps knowledge to achieve an intended goal. Garden tools, which may include such items as a lawn mower, strimmer, rake, shovel, hoe, etc; and are primarily used to aid the endeavours of those who want the best result from their garden, can be similarly equated to the tools provided in Scripture, which are furnished to us through a valuable book called the Bible.
This can also be hand-held, and achieve the same result for us in our religious life. It effectively shows us the way forward. Genesis 2:15 reminds us: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Work is a necessity whichever venture we choose to undertake. If the desire or ambition is to work the land then it will be of a physical and manual nature, which may require stamina. If it is Godly in purpose, then that requires knowledge and understanding, with application.
Gardening can teach a person much about life, the same as God can through the words written in the Bible. James Merritt once remarked: “The primary purpose of reading the Bible is not to know the Bible but to know God.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17 confirms that it is: “Profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness.”
Gardening and spirituality may also go hand-in-hand. Norman Wirzba, a Canadian-born Professor of Christian Theology and author once remarked: "Gardening, besides being a practical, life-nurturing task, is also always a spiritual activity. In it, people attempt to make visible and tasty what is good, beautiful, and even holy. Every act of gardening presupposes and embodies a way of relating to creation, a way that invariably invokes moral and spiritual decisions. Though membership in a garden is a given, how we will take our place in the membership is not.
Our aim must be to develop into good gardeners, gardeners who work harmoniously among the flows of life. This means that besides vegetables, flowers, and fruit, gardeners are themselves undergoing a spiritual cultivation into something beautiful and sympathetic and healthy. A caring, faithful, and worshipping humanity is one of the garden’s most important crops." Genesis 2:4-7 confirms: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up - for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground - then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”
Amen.
