“Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God,

But only he who sees takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning

This month as I have been reading the Old Testament (literally, the whole thing—in preparation for a summer course) I've had the garden on my mind. Different interpretations of Eden and everything it means for life, living, relationships, and godliness. What was it like to walk with God in the garden? What does that even look like? For all the other answers that might be given—which might (often rightly) point to the discontinuity of our experience with Eden—as I walk around the block, deep in Vancouver's verdant spring, I think part of the answer is that it actually looks very much like this.

God has restored us to relationship with himself. God's grace in Jesus Christ opens intimate fellowship with the Creator, the same God of the garden. The glory of God resides with us, in us, earthen vessels. Here I am, walking on an ordinary street, speaking with the Almighty God, seeing Creation roaring his glory with its profoundly deafening silence—glimpsing something wild, abundant, potent, fragrant...that yet has space for me, my voice, for participation, for wonder, for exploration. The presence of God is near to me, close, present, lying in wait right in the neighbor's garden. Bursting into bloom in my own spirit. Laying carpets of petals beneath my faltering feet. Of course the Fall—and we ourselves, complicit with it— has torn up the world. Of course its not all budding flowers, dewdrops, and honeysuckle in the breeze. I don't mean to infer otherwise, or fail to take seriously the broken and burdening state of our fractured world. But right in the midst of that brokenness, God is present. The speechless voice of simply one block's worth of domestic gardens passionately and persuasively declares a generous God of grace, beauty, and flourishing. How much more the vast beauties of God set upon His world, the works of his hands? Can it be interpreted in other ways? Definitely, yes. But can we who know him fail to hear the echoes of a good Creation still calling out his majesty in spite of evil in the world?

Just a reminder that right where we are today, in the most ordinary of days—perhaps even in the most broken of days— the fellowship of God is open to us. May we have ears to hear and eyes to see: to behold the glory of God in lesser gardens.