Watch #5: What Is a City?

This is, perhaps, less practical than the previous messages. But this is one of my favorite insights in the last ten years, and I pull this insight out on occasion to give me a thrill of what I'm looking forward to.

You know how the Bible begins in the Garden of Eden and ends in the New Jerusalem? How the Bible starts in a garden and ends in a city?

This has always made me a little sad. I think of a city as a strip mall or a big box store. And, yes, heaven has gold streets and presumably no graffiti, but it is still hard for me not to think of rebar, red lights, and cracked concrete when I think of a city.

Then I heard a preacher ask, "What is a city but a lot of little gardens?"

And that, to me, was a game-changer.

Because I live on some acreage. And after seven years, it still has no trails running through. Our vegetable garden was overtaken by taller-than-me weeds.

Untended land is not much more attractive than untended city.

But if you've ever walked around a wealthy community: this is beautiful! The space is harmonious, peaceful, creative. Different fences, sculptures, flowers and trees. Edible plants, flowering plants, shade plants, nice smelling plants. Beautiful.

That is what I was hoping for, here on our family's land. It hasn't happened yet.

But I love the promise of tended gardens, together. Community, peace, beauty.

Neither you nor I live in the fulfillment of all things yet.

But Jesus was mistaken for a gardener after his resurrection. I trust that he is at work on tending the garden of your life, as he is at work in mine.

Thanks be to God.

Love

Amy's pic