If you've seen the garden at the Vicarage you'll know that I'm not a
particularly good or industrious gardener. However, to misuse a
quote from the Bible “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”!
(The original quote is about falling into temptation, see Matthew
26:38). In my head, I have lots of ideas of things I'll do with the
garden but a short supply of time and inclination means that that is
as far as my ideas go! I can just about keep on top of the lawns and
even occasionally attempt to plant something!
Having said that I do listen to Gardener's Question Time on Radio 4
whenever I can, even if I don't always understand what they're
talking about! As well as answering questions from the audience and
listeners, each week the gardening experts give their 'topical tips'
on things keen and not-so-keen gardeners should be doing that week.
These tips often include things like pruning and planting or even
preparation for future work but one year, around this time I heard a
different topical tip. The expert advised the listeners to get a
chair and a drink, sit down in the garden and enjoy it! They were
suggesting that it was too easy to be so engrossed in 'doing the
gardening' that people forget why the garden is there in the first
place- to enjoy!
Of course, this is true not just of gardening but of life in general.
We can often be so busy running around doing all the things we do
that we don't stop to question why we are doing them or indeed to
enjoy the fruits of our labour. We find it hard to slow down, to
reflect and to reconnect with the world and the people around us.
That's
why rest, holidays and 'downtime' are so important, in fact they're
so important that God made them part of his guidelines for life. One
of the Ten Commandments instructs a Sabbath day of rest each week,
and every seventh year was to be a Sabbath year where the Israelites
were not to sow or prune (Leviticus 25:1-7) so presumably GQT was
also off-air for a year! But God didn't just want
people to rest from work, he wanted them to enjoy life. So in
Deuteronomy 24:5 he says that “If a man has recently married, he
must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one
year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife
he has married.” And in Psalm 128:2 those who love and obey God
are promised that they will eat the fruit of their labour, and Jesus
himself promises that those who are saved by him will have live, and
have it to the full (John 10:10).
So my topical tip at
this time is to look at the world and the people around you, thank
God for them and make the time to enjoy them!!
