Know, Grow, Love, The Plants of the Bible
Welcome to the Know, Grow, Love series! We will ultimately cover so many different plants in this series and I hope you will join me in Knowing, Growing and Loving each one we look at. Every series will have a specific plant we dive into. However this first series will have many as we will be covering the plants of the Bible. Why? Because there are so many amazing plants found in Gods word; how could I not what to understand them? And more so... when it comes to plants in general how could I be a gardener and not love them? Their smell, look, taste and texture give us so much joy! Simply walking on grass, what has now been coined as grounding, has been shown to lower stress levels, strengthen foot and leg muscles, help with sleep and improve mental health. No wonder God created grass, not man, as the first forms of life.
Before God created man he planted a Garden
Grass you say? Yes Genesis 1:11 tells us, “And God said , Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so”. This was day 3; and man was not even there yet! Seeing how he created us right after this, I am confident he knew that man was coming. His creation of the grass and herbs and fruit trees was not simply guesswork. Why? Because, God has a logical order about him. He does nothing without having a plan in place long before we ever came into the picture. We can see this in his creation and in his Word as he describes the beginning of life. God is logical! The order of our world's creation, including the grass we walk on, is evidence of this.
God is logical!
In Isaiah 1:18 God says, “"Come now, let us reason together." Reason is the ability to think logically about information. Consider this, God wants to reason with us!! This in itself is amazing to me. That the God of creation wants us to talk to him, reason with him. Just consider the path he took to creation. He created light and dark, day 1, The firmament, the waters day 2, dry land, the earth, the seas, grass herbs and fruit trees all before he created man. God wasn't doing a trial experiment. He didn't say, I want to create life followed by, but what is life? Does life need sustenance? No, he had a deliberate logical order to the steps he took in creating our world. He literally created sustenance for our bodies before he created us. Apparently our God knew that life had to have sustenance to survive. He knew we needed the atmosphere, land, water, plants, herbs and the sun to make the place that we live and breathe, livable for us. He created the grass for our feet, the soil for our food and our bodies all in his amazingly, logically, reasonable order and his creation is one of the things that drew me to him and to gardening. Afterall if I read God's word or simply look around our world I see this logic. He willingly presents himself to us.
The heavens declare the glory of God
Psalms 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.” We can literally see his glory. Have you ever heard of the Fibonacci sequence?
It's a mathematical series of numbers where the sum of the new number is the total of the two preceding numbers. It grows in a spiral pattern that can be found in much of nature and plants that arise from a process called optimization. Sunlight is maximized and things are packed together in ways that spaces them in perfect alignment. You see it in sunflowers, pinecones, pineapples, the branching of trees, leaf arrangements and even the growth patterns of shells and horns. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). Simply put, our God is not random! He is logical and everything around us displays that amazing logic. We see it in the sky, in the trees, in the food we eat and even our plants. We see it in math, in science, in the universe itself. Yes as Romans 1:20 claims those who have eyes to see will see. In theology they call this Common Knowledge. Meaning his work is commonly seen around us. If you never read the Bible or picked it up you will still instinctively ask who created this world I live in? Why do we do this? The answer to me is that God's creation call says through the world we live in. Like the artist that put a bit of himself in everything he made; God signed his handiwork in ways everyone can see and we instinctively look for our creator's signature.
To Plant a Garden is to Commune with God
So back to my original question. How could I be a gardener and not love plants? It's not possible, or as God would say, it's not reasonable. Putting my hands in the soil he made, touching the plants he created and watching them grow is one of the many joys of the garden world. It's this love that called me to put together a series where we can learn how to Know, Grow and Love the plants around us. But in this case , not just any plants, the Plants of the Bible. There are around 150 different plants found throughout the Bible. I pray that learning about these smatterings of plants with a focus on God's word will bring you as much joy as they consistently bring me. I'm so excited to join you in the first of my series called Know, Grow, Love: The Plants of Bible . We will look into all the biblical plants and what we can learn from them. And we will begin with Hyssop. Together we'll Know its history and biblical events, Grow it in our own gardens while growing from what God teaches us through it, and ultimately Love it — in our kitchens, our pantries and our lives.
Oma
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