How Does Your Garden Grow? / Debbie Fredericks

Debbie Fredericks

Assistant / Youth Pastor's Wife

Freedom Baptist Church

Rural Hall, NC

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

Is there Joy and Peace for all to know?…

Well this nursery rhyme doesn’t quite go like that, but it very well could. In the Garden of Life are we springing forth with Joy and Peace?

Around North Carolina we have been singing another rhyme. Rain, Rain, go away, come again another day! It seems to have rained non-stop for months. Personally I love the rain, but I must admit even I was catching myself asking for the rain to stop. A couple weeks ago the sun began to start shining! Spring had finally sprung and I will say now, thank you, Lord for all that rain!!

Oh, how I love to sit on my back porch and see the azaleas, Bradford pear trees, and finally my rose bush bloom. For the past year my poor little rose bush kept getting eaten by my dogs and it just wouldn’t bloom. This year the rose bush has taken over one whole side of my porch and probably has close to hundred roses. Obviously, the dogs out grew their need to chew. Every time I pull into my drive way after a long day I just smile and get so happy seeing my beautiful roses. I have found myself thanking God now for all the rain to allow such beauty to blossom.

Recently while studying the book of Isaiah, I came across the verses in Isaiah 55:10-12 and was quickly reminded how precious and necessary the rain is to the entire earth to not only bring forth growth and beauty but to literally sustain life. “…that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:” Verse 11 continues on, comparing God’s Word to our lives just as rain to the earth.

We need God’s Word just like rain to bring forth and accomplish the purpose of our lives. Verse 12 tells us our purpose or I could say how we should grow in the Garden of Life. “For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” As necessary as the rain is so just as necessary is God’s Word to allow our lives to bloom to show forth the beauty of our Creator.

Just as I waited and longed to see my rose bush bloom, the world longs and looks for joy and peace. So I ask you today, Mary, Mary, ( or whatever your name may be), how does your Garden Grow? Are you allowing God’s Word to water your garden and bloom with joy and peace that others may see the beauty of God? Does your life bloom joy and peace? If not let God’s Word be the water in the Garden of your Life to grow joy and peace not just to sustain your life but to allow others to see God through you so they too may grow joy and peace. God wants to use us to make His Garden bloom!