Each morning, our dog and I go for a walk. We take the same route, through a neighborhood of small houses with even smaller yards. After a couple hundred of these walks I am still noticing new things.
There are two houses which have very similar yards on the block before we turn uphill. They are both crowded with vegetation. They each have multiple small trees in a space that could be completely shaded by one. The only places that receive sunlight are the driveways, making them a good place for second gardens of potted plants. My dog and I have to walk single file past both places because the plants overflow into the sidewalk.
What I noticed this week, at the first yard we come to, is an apricot tree. It was mostly hidden in the shade amongst various bushes. Most likely it is a volunteer from seed, about two or three years old. There is no horticultural reason for anyone to have planted this tree, and plenty of reason to pull it up. The first yard is overgrown because the owner doesn’t seem care and has left his yard untended.
The second yard is different because it is tended; the owner obviously cares. This yard is overgrown because the owner loves plants; she can’t get enough of them. She lets them grow everywhere and every-which-way; that’s what life does. Each plant is individually watered, dead-headed, and fertilized. Her flowers and plants are beautiful … but her yard is messy. The plants are tended but the form the yard has taken is unintended; there is no plan here, no grand design. The street view is unattractive, but the close-ups are beautiful.
There is a third type of yard I would like to mention to go with the first, untended, and the second, tended but unintended. A couple of my neighbors pay landscapers to design and care for their yards. These yards are both tended and intended. The street view is attractive and the close-ups are nice.
Many people desire a God who is like a professional landscaper, one who is in control of everything, from the grand design of the universe to the size of each tomato. However, most of the world I spend my time in is messy. So I have a difficult time imagining that it has been designed by and is cared for by someone who wants everything to be perfect.
At the opposite pole are many people who imagine that there is no God, no entity either to design or tend the universe. Their world appears like that of the first yard I have described here, overrun by scraggly plants. This also is not the world that I live in. Everywhere I look I find beauty in the midst of confusion.
What I see, the world I live in is most like the second yard I have described here; a world run wild which receives an abundance of loving care.
My Christian faith tells me that God saves the world, not by taking control and making all things right, but by entering the world in the flesh. Jesus came healing and teaching, eating with embezzlers and prostitutes, and casting out demons. He invited people to imagine the Kingdom of God and to welcome it into their lives. But he never fell for the temptation to rule the world.
If I were a plant I’d prefer growing, not in the yard manicured by J & J Landscaping, but in the one loved and tended by the lady with the beautiful dahlias. What about you?
