God had a purpose in placing Adam and Eve in a garden home. He could have made them cave-dwellers. He could have put them in a palace. Instead, with their greatest benefits in mind, He made them gardeners.
Today, the blessings of the first garden are available to anyone who cares to learn the simple skills required to garden. Gardens are very versatile. You can be a gardener inside your own home or office, even if you don’t have access to land outdoors. With indoor lights, you may grow a variety of adaptable green and flowering plants that will improve the indoor atmosphere by filtering the air and providing needed oxygen to your indoor space. Aside from the improved air quality that plants provide, psychological benefits have also been documented. So even if you work in an office under artificial lights all day, you can improve your health through gardening, albeit on a much smaller scale than an outdoor space would afford.
Like nature, gardening offers a wide variety of benefits in four main areas of health: physical, psychological, social, and spiritual.
Physical Benefits
God cares about your physical health. He knew that gardening would provide the necessary stimulation to engage in regular physical activity. Gardening, though hard work, provides tangible rewards for labor invested. Not only can you enjoy what the garden produces, you gain physical health by increasing your physical activity level.
Psychological Benefits
Adam and Eve’s intellect was stimulated through work in the garden God planted. Gardening is a full sensory experience, in which all your senses are fully engaged. In this technological age where seeing and hearing are used almost to the exclusion of our other senses, gardening has the power to awaken all the senses.
Social Benefits
In Eden, Adam and Eve learned to labor together in their appointed work in the garden. Whether you garden with family or friends, you can experience the same strengthening of relational bonds, shared cooperative effort, and deepening reliance upon one another that Adam and Eve experienced. Gardening together can help improve your relationships with others.
Spiritual Benefits
Our first parents knew from experience that the work of nurturing a seedling to maturity had many spiritual lessons worth learning for them. The weeds that invaded the garden were a constant reminder of the folly of sin. But the miracle of the promised resurrection was also apparent in the burial of each seed and the subsequent springing of the seedling “in newness of life”. Gardening provides a number of metaphors for life.
Make gardening a regular part of your life for increased physical, psychological, social, and spiritual benefits. Enjoy God’s gift of blessings and benefits from gardening. Start today and see what He will teach you.
