Our first parents began in a garden. Humankind fell in a garden. Jesus prayed in a garden. He and His disciples met there. Jesus was buried in a garden (John 19:41). The Messiah was raised in a garden. He was even mistaken for the gardener (John 20:15). A garden is a place of planting, a place where dying seeds burst out with new life, a place of flowers, a place of fruitfulness. We are fed by the gardens of the earth. Out of God’s garden came the Bread of Heaven, manna for the soul, resurrected life, and full triumph over death. The garden lost at the beginning of the Bible is pictured as restored by Gardener-Messiah at the end of the Bible. It will be resplendent beyond our feeble imaginations!
“After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered” John 18:1 (NRSV).
