The Garden Heralds Resurrection

Welcoming spring’s rays, our little farm is coming alive — grass reaches up to the sun, eggs fill nesting boxes and kitchen bowls, and mama-cat hides away new kittens. Standing on the porch, you could peer through the screen door to spy an ambitious stack of seed packets and gardening notes spread out on my kitchen counter. This is the time of year that gardening is just FUN — beautiful weather, very few mosquitoes, and the anticipation of summer’s first ripe tomato.

Anticipation of harvest: that’s why gardeners garden, isn’t it? Because as wonderful as it is to be outside on a warm sunny day, the reason we bury seeds each spring is not simply because the weather beckons us; we plant because we anticipate the coming reward. Fruits, vegetables, and flowers are the resurrected results of buried seeds. We only garden if we expect a harvest, and we only expect a harvest if bare kernels will give up their solitary existence in exchange for resurrection.

We garden in hope of each tiny seed’s resurrection. And for those who have cast our lot to Calvary, the spring season proclaims to each of us our own coming resurrections. The triumphant Story that the Creator writes into the garden is that all who believe on Jesus will experience resurrection, as he did.

The trowel peels back the earth, I tuck the seed inside, and the soil seals closed the seed’s tomb. Down the garden row I continue, pressing large seeds into their holes and sprinkling a fine dusting of dark soil over the tops of small ones. Hiding away seed after seed, my heart swells over the good news the garden preaches: in Christ, resurrection always follows death. “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Cor 15:22)

In this body, this tent, as Paul refers to it in 2 Corinthians 5, we groan, being burdened, longing that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Our circumstances vary person to person, but we share together the longing to put on our heavenly dwelling. At times we all feel it more keenly than others, that longing for our own resurrection.

What burdens you this season? What is the source of your personal “groaning?” What experience makes you long for heaven? For whatever situation comes to your mind, I think about something that D.A. Carson said: “I’m not suffering from anything that a good resurrection can’t fix.”

Since Jesus was raised, all who repent of their sins and put their faith in Jesus Christ are promised that when the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” Oh death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? So, take heart!, my beloved sisters, and be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Let the garden’s preaching embolden you to trust the God who raises the dead, so that we live all of life as women anticipating our own resurrections.