I know that I write a lot about gardens. I love to watch the miracle of growth in any form. However, gardens present such a wonderful example of God at work, silently and skillfully in areas where we can easily view and enjoy the results. 

From childhood, I have learned to save many things. My mother saved soap remnants in a jar for future use; she saved eggshells for fertilizing her house plants and she had an endless supply for quilting scraps that I haven’t yet been able to give away.  

So, it is only normal for me to save plants-anything with a little bit of green still showing gets saved. I have tiny poinsettias left over from Christmas time, long tall basil plants that have self-seeded in a big blue pot, mums that insist on continuing to grow tall and lanky and an unknown flowering vine that persists in clinging and climbing up an arbor. They are beautiful to my eyes. 

The reason that I call them the Redemption Garden is because I leave them for the summer to fend for themselves. I move them out to the yard in their pots and try to get them to a spot where they will receive water from the irrigation system. They don’t always look very healthy when I get back in the Fall. 

That is until I bring them back into the shelter of the patio and give them some TLC and water. Water-very important. Then they flourish again. They will always look like mongrel plants, but such a statement for the persistence of life and the loving gift of a wise and caring God. 

It is easy to make the connection between the benefits of water and the loving relationship of God. God gives us that water of life in the physical and the spiritual sense. In his creative wisdom, he designed water to be a life-giving substance.  

Every time I bring water to my garden, I pray and meditate on the unconditional love that God has for these tiny plants in their fight to survive. Every time, it renews that feeling of love that God has for me, for you, for his Redemption Gardens all over the universe. 

Terri