Gardening Instruments for Revival
We need a game plan for increasing cultural wisdom and the necessity of revival—keeping ourselves spiritually fit for service.
Such wisdom toward revival is characterized by a discernment helping us identify, for instance, entertainment offerings that are a wise investment of time and energy from those that are trivial at best, dehumanizing at worst. For too many of us, our entertainment choices, including the hours of binge viewing and social media scrolling are made without considering the Lordship of Christ. Often, our mindless submission to the entertainment options readily available can dull our sensitivity to God’s desires for our revival.
The cultural task, including what to do with our discretionary time as it relates to the necessity of revival, can be understood as working and resting in our God-appointed garden. The “garden” is a dominant biblical metaphor helping us prepare for moment-by-moment revival.
Take a look at the imagery of the garden in Genesis 2:15 NIV: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”
Extracting insight provoking revival and spiritual readiness from this imagery involves focusing on three crucial roles: first, the Lord God, the Creator of all gardens who has functionally sub-lent garden areas; secondly, the gardeners, individual women and men, who like Adam and Eve, are essentially tenant farmers working and taking care of their assigned garden spot; and third, the garden itself, its potential, its challenges—and its capacity for growth and abundant provision.
For the garden to flourish it must be cultivated faithfully by a gardener who is learning wisdom incrementally over time from the Master Creator. The gardener tills the soil, plants the seeds, removes stones, and works through the storms and sun purposefully and confidently. Revival is often spurred by the clarity of our task—to cultivate our garden!
There is no fear of ultimate meaninglessness in the work. Sisyphus’ curse is not a part of the meaningful equation of sewing and reaping. Springtime and harvest are seasonal reminders of the gracious reality of cause and effect the gardener dare not mock with listless and half-hearted engagement in the gardening task (Galatians 6:7). Glorious meaningfulness in the work is understood in the certainty of accountability to the Master Gardener who assigned each gardener their unique portion of the land. That should be knowledge enough to nudge us toward daily revival!
And wise gardening includes awareness of the importance of rest. Sabbath rest restores energies and deepens imaginative possibilities that make work joyfully more than bearable. Without rest the work in the garden called our life becomes an idolatrous end in and of itself. This aspect of the garden metaphor is crucial in developing a biblical understanding of the role of entertainment in general, and, more specifically, the wise use of our discretionary time.
The garden metaphor provides the picture of what the Reformed Christian tradition has labeled the “Cultural Mandate,” the initial biblical mandate from which all other commands of God, including the discipleship mandate of Matthew 28: 18-20, are understood. It is the Lord God who is the ultimate instructor of gardening brilliance, the supreme consultant, the perfect counselor and energizer. It is the individual human gardener who is responsible for learning as much as they can about the gardening task, revived to learned anew each day.
Sometimes, when we forget about cultivating the garden called our lives and loves, the institutions of family, church, and community, the gardens can become overrun with weeds and seeming disrepair. A provoking instrument toward revival, one which restores a commitment to serve wisely Jesus Christ and his kingdom is being shocked into the truth that we are called to cultivate the “garden” God has given us.
Revive us today, Lord! Help us to pick up the gardening instruments of “fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5: 22, 23)!
Paul D. Patton, Ph.D., is a professor of communication and theater at Spring Arbor University in Michigan. He has graduate degrees in Guidance and Counseling, Religious Education, and Script and Screenwriting, and a doctorate in Communication with an emphasis in theater arts. He has been married to his wife Beth for over forty years and has three daughters (all actresses)—Jessica, Emily, and Grace, three sons-in-law, David, Joe, and Eric, and four grandsons, Caleb Rock, Logan Justice, Micah Blaze, and Miles Dean.