Gardening God's Way

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Our yard is getting very interesting with the various flowers blooming.  My husband was commenting the other day on how many of our flowers have just come up randomly.

We planted several plants this year, but so many of our flowers must be the result of wandering birds or the wind.  It seems nature is creating a beautiful landscape all on its own, without any help from us—and it is doing an amazing job!

Beauty is one of the primary ways we can encounter God. The beauty of nature cannot be disconnected from our Creator, who is responsible for every living thing.

St. Therese of Lisieux understood this intimately.  In this 19th century nun’s autobiography, Story of a Soul, (Chapter 1, Earliest Memories) she connects the beauty of flowers to “Our Lord’s living garden,” linking the differences in flowers to the varying degrees of sainthood:

“Our Lord has deigned to explain this mystery to me. He showed me the book of nature, and I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose its springtide beauty, and the fields would no longer be enamelled with lovely hues. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord’s living garden. He has been pleased to create great Saints who may be compared to the lily and the rose, but He has also created lesser ones, who must be content to be daisies or simple violets flowering at His Feet, and whose mission it is to gladden His Divine Eyes when He deigns to look down on them. And the more gladly they do His Will the greater is their perfection.”

I have always found this comparison of the beauty of creation in nature and mankind remarkable.  Since each of us makes a personal contribution to God’s garden, not by our own design but by our mere existence, we have to wonder, “Am I a lily or a rose, or a daisy or a simple violet?”

St. Therese makes the point that each of us fills out God’s unique and beautiful landscape by being all that we were created to be, and living out God’s will for our life, as we help to achieve perfection in his garden.

Unlike the flowers popping up in my yard, God’s garden that is created in us is not random.  We have each been chosen, each and every one of us, out of God’s love for us.

Janet Cassidy
janetcassidy.blogspot.com
janetcassidy.blubrry.net (podcasts)

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