Even though I’ve never met her, I want Dana Smith as my next new best friend. My friend Dana wrote this in the New York Times on May 23, “Last Saturday, I was covered in dirt, my back ached, the scream of a trillion cicadas rang in my ears, and, despite my best efforts, a sunburn was developing on the back of my neck. I was in heaven.” She was writing about why gardening is so good for people.

I am right there with you, friend, save those trillion cicadas. My garden, any garden is heavenly. Dana pointed out what fellow gardeners know—gardening is good for your physical and mental well-being. Even a stroll through the Growing Place or Hacker’s or Heinz Greenhouse is good for my mental health.

There are other gardens that we need to linger in for the sake of our souls.

First is the original garden, the one God planted in Eden, in the east, where he put the man whom he had formed (see Gen. 2:8). I do wonder about our first parents’ gardening skills, or more accurately their listening skills, as the garden God designed became the backdrop for humanity’s fall into sin.

English poet John Milton described this fall in the opening lines of Paradise Lost: Book 1:

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,

In this loss of Eden, however, is the promise of other gardens to come. We hear it in “the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day,” (Gen. 3:8) calling and seeking newly lost humanity. We see it in God’s words to the serpent about Eve’s offspring: “he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Gen 3:15) and we see the promise in God’s covering of Adam and Eve.

That first promised garden to come is Gethsemane, and the promise unfolds at night against a backdrop of a supper, of bread and wine, of betrayal and denial, of sorrow even to death and sleep. Milton’s greater Man, Scripture’s Second Adam, does what the first Adam did not do in paradise, and in a broken, bleak garden, he says, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” (Mark 14:36) And the blows begin to rain down on the serpent’s head.

Then comes a garden by a tomb, where one could be excused for looking for a serpent, who perhaps did deliver a fatal blow. But Mary Magdalene wasn’t looking for a serpent, she was looking for her dearly loved Savior who wasn’t in the tomb. And in that beautiful ironic way of Scripture, who should come to her, but a gardener, walking in the cool of the morning, calling Mary’s name, dispelling any lingering serpents and sending Mary on her way to the disciples.

The last garden is the garden we linger in now. The garden where we still pull weeds of jealousy, selfish ambition, boasting and false idols, but with wise garden advice, we can sow love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and gentleness. Reaping a harvest of righteousness until the first Eden gives way and all creation is restored.