Meditation on Leviticus 25:1-12
Creation Care Sunday
Final Post: Tell Me About Your Garden Series
First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY
Pastor Karen Crawford
April 27, 2025
Listen to the devotion here:
I am almost ready to plant my seedlings! The weather is still a little iffy, especially with nighttime temperatures dropping into the 40s.
This is one of the hardest stages for me with growing plants from seeds. I have been nurturing them for a couple of months inside, with grow lights and careful watering. Now is the time to “harden” them, which is to help them make a gradual transition from their indoor homes and pampered lifestyles to growing in the earth in the community of weeds, flowers, insects, squirrels, rabbits, and deer—all God’s Creation.
I have made mistakes in the past at this stage. I have rushed transplanting, only to have my careful nurturing of seedlings come to naught, with a sudden heat wave, too much wind, or too much rain damaging or even killing the plant. The key is finding the right place to keep the plants outside, still in their containers, during the day for a few hours at a time to help them make a successful transition.
Yesterday, though it was raining off and on and not as warm as it had been, was my first day of hardening eight of the seedling plant trays. I laid them on the covered veranda that connects our garage to the side entrance. And I asked the Lord to watch over and help them get ready for their new lives on the outside. May they flourish in their environment. May they grow big and strong and beautiful and become all that God has ordained them to be.
I have learned about my faith through the nurturing of plants. I have experienced God’s encouragement and lifted mood and a sense of wholeness and healing. I have learned from other gardeners about their faith growing through connecting with the soil, too. Some report improved health, along with spiritual benefits.
Stanley Kunitz, a Poet Laureate of the U.S. and Pulitzer Prize-winner, says when he was in his 80s, “I think that if I had been denied (gardening) I would not be speaking to you today. My gardens have nurtured, fortified, and sustained me that much. It is not only a sustenance of the body, but also of the spirit within. This is because the garden for me is more than simply a place for toil, it is also a place for meditation and a place for restoration of the inner life.[1] Gardening teaches you empathy, he says, “as you develop a respect for the life force that runs through other creatures, other forms of existence, even those that are very humble—and that some might dismiss as loathsome pests.”[2] He goes on, “In a sense, human beings and the earth’s flora are our brothers and sisters. We belong to the same kingdom, and we’d better learn how to get along in order to survive together and take care of each other. In my garden, if my plants promise to grow, I promise to take care of them.”[3]
What Kunitz says about taking care of his plants and his spirituality echoes what some of our gardeners say. Faith speaks of her close relationship with plants. “I usually try to be very supportive of them,” she says. “I encourage them when they are making an effort. I admonish them when they are lagging behind. ‘I think you can do better than that!’ I don’t have long, extended conversations. Everybody needs support. I am mildly amused with myself. It’s almost like I am really talking to myself. If things aren’t going all right. ‘What do you mean I’m not doing such a good job? When was the last time you watered me?’ There is a kind of joy in it… They are creatures in Creation, and I feel responsible for them as if I were a parent.”
George and Lottie say that gardening has helped them persevere and heal through difficult times—serious health problems, unexpected early retirement, a move from a house to an apartment, and a sober journey. Lily has experienced relief from chronic pain while tending to her flowers and vegetables. “I feel like I come in exhausted but fulfilled. I could be hurting, being on your knees, going through everything, but just the joy of it takes away any little pain that you would have.”
The healing of which gardeners speak is supported by medical research. Studies show that “green care” therapy—exposure to plants and gardening and not necessarily doing the physical work of gardening—has numerous health benefits, including “beneficial effects on mood and mental health.”[4] In some cases, all it takes is “simply observing nature, or even images of natural scenes. In a Japanese study, viewing plants altered EEG recordings and reduced stress, fear, anger and sadness, as well as reducing blood pressure, pulse rate and muscle tension.”[5] Patients exposed to eight different species of indoor plants after surgery had reduced hospital stays and reported less pain and greater satisfaction with their hospital rooms. Improving the surroundings for patients, visitors, and staff, “therapeutic gardens have been used in hospitals for thousands of years and were strongly supported by Florence Nightingale.”[6]
During my interview with Belinda and Brad, Belinda reminds her husband that he told her after mowing the lawn the day before that he had “a whole lot of different ideas about ways to handle certain situations” when he came inside. Brad answers, “Well, it takes three hours to mow the lawn.” (Laughs) “So I get deep in thought.” His wife later says that Brad came in from mowing much happier than before. She sometimes tells him to go outside and work in the yard because it makes him feel better.
The couple share easily about their comfort from God in April 2020, when Brad was digging the area of the yard that is now a fenced in private dog park for their pet Harley. Brad’s father was hospitalized, and they were scared, as it was the beginning of the pandemic. Brad remembers, “Oh my God, we’re sending him to the hospital, and COVID is killing people…. I remember being back there working on that land, and then digging this (a figurine of Joseph holding Jesus) up, and saying. “This is a sign, you know!”
Belinda adds, “So it’s Jesus’ father. He’s worried about his father, then Jesus’ father comes out of the yard. …. Isn’t that incredible?” She turns to Brad, “It made you happy. It was very hard to find happy at that point, and it made you happy.”
But here on Creation Care Sunday, especially, a question comes to mind. Is it enough that our gardens bring us joy, peace, and healing and a greater connection to God and God’s Creation? This question came up in my oral evaluation last week. Is gardening anthropocentric? In other words, is it all about us and conforming a plot of soil to our own vision and expectations? Is gardening what God intends for this piece of earth where we live? Would it be better to just leave it alone and let it grow wild?
It was a valid question. Not all gardening is good for the earth or the human and non-human creatures who live on it and therefore would not be a spiritual practice, I said, drawing us closer to God and one another; strengthening our faith, hope, and love; and bringing life to the world. If we approach gardening only caring about making our yards look good, at the expense of the health and wellbeing of all God’s creatures, then we have failed. Some gardening techniques, such as planting too many non-natives that destroy the habitat for native plants, insects and pollinators; over-irrigation that increases the salt content of the soil and depletes it of nutrients; and the use of chemical rather than organic fertilizers are detrimental to the health of human beings, to soil and air, and to the groundwater, which flows into our streams and rivers, and out to the Sound and ocean.
Something else that is important to talk about, as we finish this series, is the importance of Sabbath living, not just for human beings, but for the land. In the seventh year, God calls for a complete rest for the land, as the Lord does in the 50th year, the Year of Jubilee, when the people of God “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.”
This question of Sabbath challenges me, as I begin another season of gardening. I know it means that I should never turn gardening into a work or a chore that I resent, if my desire is for it to be a spiritual practice. Pat has urged me to get a bench and sit on it in my garden, taking time to enjoy the peace and beauty and presence of the Lord with me.
The question of Sabbath for the land is even more challenging. I have decided that we will only use organic fertilizer and compost at the manse, instead of the usual 5 chemical fertilizer treatments each season. And we won’t use any insecticides. I want to do what is good for the land and all that lives on it.
And what does it mean to live in the year of Jubilee, which is no longer once every 50 years but is now, with our new life in Christ? The Crucified and Risen One has set us free from the bondage of our sin and broken down the dividing walls between people. Therefore, how do our lives—our words and our actions—proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants, and, once again, give the land a complete rest?
It stirs another question for me. How is God speaking to us today about the connection between our lives of liberty and rest to our own wholeness and healing as the people Christ has redeemed, those seeking to live new, resurrected lives together in God’s garden—the Church in the world?
As this series draws to a close, I hope and pray that it will mean new beginnings for us. especially during the season of Easter and today, on Creation Care Sunday. Dear friends, I offer this blessing to gardeners and non-gardeners alike, to all who seek to live in peace with all human and non-human beings, to all who have seen and know what is good and what God requires of us, as Micah 6:8 says: to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God. May the LORD guide you always; satisfying your needs in a sun-scorched land and strengthening your frame. May you be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Amen!
[1] Connie Goldman and Richard Mahler, Tending the Earth, Mending the Spirit: The Healing Gifts of Gardening (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2000) 140.
[2] Goldman and Mahler, Tending the Earth, 142.
[3] Goldman and Mahler, Tending the Earth, 143.
[4] Richard Thompson, “Gardening for health: a regular dose of gardening,” in Clinical Medicine, Vol. 18, No. 3(London: Royal College of Physicians, June 2018), 201-205.
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