You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride;
    you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.

• Song of Songs 4:12

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

• 2 Corinthians 12:9

“My garden has a wooden fence around it. The plants accept that their place is inside the fence. They know that is where they grow. For us, we are safe and secure when we remain within the fence of God’s presence. It is here that we grow. Within the boundaries He has set for us-which is really a place of freedom and joy-we bloom and blossom. When we step out of those boundaries, we cannot always see the grace and mercy available to us. …
“God’s grace in calling us to His Son can never be totally understood in this life, but it can be accepted.”

• Corrie ten Boom, God is my Hiding Place

“I yield to the trustworthy hands of the gardener of my soul, and I will blossom and release the beauty of the Lord from within.”

• Corrie ten Boom, Highlighted Quote

Boilerplate

In this new mini-series, I will be looking at a devotion that is said to be written by Corrie ten Boom.  Really, this devotion is like several that I had read.  They come from the writings of that person.  Thus, the prayers at the end may be the editor’s addition to what Corrie ten Boom actually wrote.

Each of these posts will include the suggested verses to read, a quote from the writing that came from a Corrie ten Boom book (five in all according to the copyright page, but no chapter in the book is given the specific book of origin).  I will also include the highlighted quote, similar to an internet quotation, and I will end with the quoted prayer for that devotion.

Discussion

Tante Corrie rarely stopped for a while.  Planting a garden seems so foreign to her tales of being a Tramp for the Lord.  But in the book, she was in Africa when the doctor told her to slow down.  She was developing complications with her heart.  As a result, she took her Sabbath Year in Africa.  Her secretary, or companion, delivered materials to various people and the secretary gave talks.  But then, a message reached Tante Corrie, and she put her rest aside.

I am thinking that it was during this year that she finally was at a place long enough to see her garden grow.  But then, it could have been before the Nazi’s invaded the Netherlands, and she began to hide Jews from the Gestapo.  I added this musing in that my wife always liked context.

When I was growing up, we almost always had a garden.  I do not remember a garden at our house in Tupelo, MS.  The house in Tupelo and the one in Collins, MS I would not characterized as ‘Home.’  Tupelo was my Boy Scout years, and I might have never gotten my Eagle Scout if it were not for the scoutmaster that I had in Tupelo, but beyond that, the three different houses in nearby Pontotoc, MS all felt like home, and only one of the three is still standing, where my sister and her family live.

But when I was at that farmhouse that I still feel is a kind of home, I remember planting seeds in rows and watching the vegetables grow.  It was an endless job.  There were always weeds to remove.  I was good at using a hoe.  My mother used the hoe as a weapon.  Each weed had to be obliterated into non-existence.  I just chopped it free and threw the broken weed in the yard or onto the path between rows.  My mother could tell, and I learned how to tell, the difference between a viable plant and a weed with the first two leaves that emerge from the ground, but sometimes, my mother would chop a good plant up.  It was too close to the next plant, and both would starve each other and neither would bear fruit.  Sometimes, when the weed and the good plant were similar, she cut them both out.  The nutrients in the soil were not going to make healthy weeds in my mother’s way of thinking.  And note: When she was eight-months pregnant with me, she was told to take it easy.  If she did anything strenuous, she might have a miscarriage.  The next day in the garden, she hoed the weeds with such a ferocity that she slipped a disk in her back.  I paid for that slipped disk my entire life.

And I would occasionally find a viable vegetable plant in the path between rows.  My mother would chide me for not killing it.  I argued that it was a good plant, but she said that it would not be terribly fruitful when we stepped on it.  Tripping around the misplaced plant would not be safe for us or the good plants that might break our fall.  And to guarantee her victory in the argument, she chopped up the plant into a thousand tiny green shreds.  That is a bit of exaggeration in that the plant was so small, a thousand shreds would leave nothing but a puree.  But that is close to the result.  I never had a chance to dig up the plant and replant it in the row.  We needed those paths to get into the garden to remove the weeds and eventually reap the harvest.

When we step away from God’s presence, God does not chop us into a puree, although sometimes it might feel that way.  He may chasten us and get us back on the right path.

My question in reading this chapter of Tante Corrie’s book, the next to the last chapter, is what type of gardener do you want to care for you?

Do you want the gardener who chops you into a puree if you get out of line or you simply do not look like a viable fruit bearing plant?

Or do you want the Gardener who loves you and allows you to grow and be fruitful where planted.

In the end, it is best to stay in the presence of God, where plants can grow to their fullest.  And God allows us to move from one place to another.  He uses that moving around to put us where He needs us to further His kingdom.

Closing Prayer

“Father, I want to be Your glorious garden-the one who brings You joy.· Come with Your Holy Spirit and remove the weeds that have choked me and caused me to shrink away from the Son in any way. Bless me, have mercy on me and give me the grace to stay within the boundaries of Your love. Surround me, as a wooden fence surrounds a garden. May my life emit the fragrance of Your Spirit within me.”

• Corrie ten Boom, God is my Hiding Place (prayer for Day 39, Safe in the Garden of His Love)

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.