I had been thinking about setting aside time to garden with God.

In my mind, that meant doing ordinary garden work prayerfully: potting up seedlings, pruning, watering, weeding, noticing what was growing, and inviting God into the rhythm of it.

Then my dear sister in Christ Wilma said something that shifted the whole picture:

God is the gardener.

That does not replace the first idea. It deepens it.

We can garden with God by tending soil and plants. We can also let God garden in us.

Both are true.

Gardening With God

There is something holy about slow, ordinary attention.

When we pot seedlings, we handle small vulnerable life. When we prune, we make room for healthier growth. When we water, we participate in nurture. When we weed, we learn that not everything growing in a place belongs there. When we wait, we remember that life is not controlled by our urgency.

All of this can become prayer.

We do not need to use many words. We can simply work with God in mind.

Lord, bless this seedling.

Lord, teach me patience.

Lord, show me what needs tending.

Lord, help me notice what I usually rush past.

Gardening with God is not complicated. It is the practice of becoming present: to God, to creation, to our own bodies, and to the living world we have been entrusted to care for.

Letting God Garden in Us

But if God is the gardener, then the garden is not only outside us.

We are also soil.

There are things in us that need planting. There are things that need pruning. There are hard places that need softening. There are tangled places that need patience. There are areas where something good is already growing, but it is still tender and small.

This is not always comfortable.

If I invite God to garden in me, I am inviting God to touch more than the beautiful parts. I am inviting God into the neglected places, the overgrown places, the places where fear, control, hurry, resentment, apathy, or despair have taken root.

That is tender work.

It is also hopeful work.

God is not a careless gardener. God does not tear up what is fragile for the pleasure of destruction. God tends toward life. God prunes for fruitfulness. God restores what has been choked, dried out, forgotten, or wounded.

A Letter of Apology to God

One way to begin may be with a letter of apology to God.

Not an apology rooted in shame, as though God is waiting to crush us with guilt.

A true apology is an act of honesty. It says: I see something now that I did not fully see before. I have participated in harm. I have neglected what was entrusted to me. I want to turn toward repair.

For Green Ministry, that kind of apology might sound like this:

God, I am sorry for the ways I have treated Your creation as background instead of gift.

I am sorry for receiving beauty without gratitude.

I am sorry for consuming without attention.

I am sorry for the ways my comfort has been connected to harm I did not want to see.

I am sorry for forgetting that soil, water, plants, creatures, neighbours, and future generations are held in Your love.

Please forgive me.

Please teach me.

Please garden in me until I become more faithful, more gentle, more grateful, and more alive to Your presence in the world You made.

Amen.

An Invitation

If you try this practice, you might set aside a short time in a garden, near a houseplant, beside a tree, or even with a bowl of seeds on the table.

Begin by noticing.

What is growing?

What is dry?

What is tangled?

What is being pruned?

What is waiting?

Then ask the same questions inwardly.

Lord, what are You growing in me?

What needs water?

What needs pruning?

What needs to be uprooted?

What are You asking me to tend?

You may want to write your own letter to God. It can be private. It can be shared. It can be a prayer, a confession, a promise, or simply a beginning.

The point is not to perform remorse. The point is to become available to grace.

Because God is the gardener.

And by mercy, we are still growing.