Garden of Gifts

Muscles strain and strengthen under wheelbarrow loads of compost. 

Palms blister and heal gripping shovel, rake, and cultivator.

Back bends sore over hundreds of lettuce plantlings.  

Hands crack dry embracing the dead-life-giving soil. 

Smiles grow in this land...this land of the living. 

It isn’t paradise, but it’s the closest thing this side of the Jordan. 

It’s the place where the dead give life, where storm is greeted as warmly as sun, where man links hand with the Creator. 

It’s a farm...a garden. The place God created at the beginning of time and then cursed for our blessing. It’s where hearts of stony self-service break into the rocks of life-giving, life-pouring, life-living gifts. Where child learns with parent and grandparent to give thanks in everything, to care for everything. To weep and laugh, to mourn and dance...to live life to its fullest. 

Oh, and others might scorn the simplicity, the humility, the sacred duty of those who kneel and pour their lives back into the ground they came from. They might deride the sweat, the tears shed over plants lost, the blending of hearts with the Creator - because they’re too busy to realize the glory in it.  

I’m guilty of that attitude...but something, Someone, is changing that. 

It has to do with gifts...counting them. Not gifts desired, but gifts given.

Gifts for those who wish to see - who take the time to see. Gifts for those who give thanks...in everything.