My family shares parts of a farm in the South Valley of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Some of the land is meadow, and there are several flower gardens and a vegetable garden. We raise chickens, which supply eggs, and guinea fowl, which help us keep bugs and snails under control. Also, it’s not unusual to see a peahen or a peacock roaming around.
My contribution has been designing, planting, and weeding. In the past I have been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of weeds and felt discouraged in my efforts to sustain plant growth. But recently, the weekly Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly alerted me to the realization that my thoughts and actions should not be hampered by material and mortal beliefs concerning creation.
I felt that this quotation from Isaiah, from the Responsive Reading in the Lesson one week, was meant for me: “For the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody” (51:3).
The realization dawned on me that God is responsible for His universe, including our farm. And God’s, Spirit’s, creation is spiritual and not made to break down and decay, or even grow out of control. In fact, as I embraced the wonders in the first chapter of Genesis, that God saw everything that He had made and that it was all very good, I realized I had been duped into believing the allegorical account of creation in chapter two, where man was not only kicked out of the lush beauty of the garden of Eden, but doomed to toiling away at the soil in hopes of personally sustaining life apart from Spirit.
Later in the month, still inspired by these concepts and while traveling north into Colorado, I glimpsed a bit more about God’s universe. I saw more clearly that Spirit’s ideas are made manifest in the beauty we see around us. The idea behind valleys, mountains, waters, and even the skies has always existed in the eternal Mind.
Spirit’s ideas are made manifest in the beauty we see around us.
During that journey, as I experienced the wondrous beauty of nature, I felt the truth of Mary Baker Eddy’s statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Divine Mind is the only cause or Principle of existence. Cause does not exist in matter, in mortal mind, or in physical forms” (p. 262). I was encouraged to simply appreciate and glorify God’s wondrous beauty—seeing each bud, each blossom, and each star as expressing an infinite eternal idea.
On another occasion at home, I was clearing away a mass of early annuals and came across scrubs and plants that I thought had died, but actually were flourishing beneath the mess. A lot of the things I have been told will not last here in the high desert do so beautifully.
This further convinces me that only to the degree that we think about our gardens and our world through Christianly scientific understanding will we see the perfect balance and order of God’s creation manifested around us. In examining the tiny black seeds from a flower, and feeling amazed that something smaller than a pinhead could spring into a two-foot stalk and blossom with a flower the size of a softball, I rejoiced to see this pointing to the biblical truth that for every idea of God, the “seed is in itself” (Genesis 1:11), and it must flourish at His command.
Each day I am discovering new wonders. So I humbly ask myself: If I can modestly perceive the abundance, intricacy, and beauty of our family’s gardens, what more does God have in store for us as we each open our eyes and hearts to the wonders of Spirit? What more can we do to revise our view of Eden?
