Gardening towards eternity

Staff at a Salvation Army Housing complex in Victoria have just completed a new garden upgrade, seen here. What if such community gardens and connection to nature are all part of our restoration to the full garden of Genesis that God always had in mind, writes Rosy Keane.

Tomorrow (6 October) marks World Habitat Day. The United Nations have announced that this year’s observance will be linked to urban crisis response. There are multiple crises affecting urban areas across the globe, not least of which are climate change and conflict. In this piece, AUXILIARY-LIEUTENANT ROSY KEANE writes about how we so easily disregard the vitality of creation, and how we can uphold a flourishing world for all.

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It’s an incredible thing that the book of Genesis tells us that God invites humanity to be gardeners. In the beginning, Genesis 1 says that God created and created and created, and then humans were appointed to tend to the earth, summed up in the word ‘dominion’.  

It was only after Adam and Eve’s disobedience that that tending turned sour, and humanity’s careful dominion turned into domination. Our title as rulers over the earth became entitlement that stripped unity from one another. It resulted in the first animals being killed (God clothed the errant Eve and Adam in fur), and the first conflict between man and woman. Instead of the great joy of flowers blooming and the earth singing, it resulted in conflict with the earth too. Instead of joy in harvesting, the ground’s yield would now be brought forth with much labour, sweat, and tears.  

In some streams of philosophical thinking, it can seem like we don’t need to consider the earth as it is or improve our communities, because one day it will all be over, or, as Christians believe, we will join Jesus in heaven. But thinking like this disregards the fact that Jesus brought heaven to earth in a distinctly embodied way, by becoming human, working with his hands and nature as a carpenter (I wonder if Jesus got splinters?), interacting with water, fish, storms, people, flowers, and trees. 

Jesus brought reconnection wherever he went.  

God is not a capitalist. The Bible says that the kingdom of God is upside down, that those who want to be greatest must become least. The kingdom of Heaven is not ‘survival of the fittest’. God does not endorse exploiting the earth for riches, nor plundering humanity for labour or domination of resources.  

What does this mean when it comes to creation care, and loving the earth that God spoke into being? What does that mean for what we owe one another, as Scripture says, a debt of love (Romans 13:8)? I think perhaps we are wise to sit at the feet of our Indigenous sisters and brothers in Australia and around the world, as they have so much experience in their relationship with earth and country.  

I learned that Aboriginal people who lived in Tasmania, known as the Palawa or Pakana mob south of the mainland, had what they called fire ecology before contact with colonists. They used controlled burns not to restore the land back to its 'original' form, but to promote new growth, moving with the seasons, and creating a flourishing ecosystem as a result.  

After contact with the colonists, who denied Aboriginal mob respect and severed their connection to land, not only was there horrific genocide, but the country itself was never the same after those original relationships and lives were erased.  

The kingdom of heaven is not ‘survival of the fittest’.

What might it look like for us to reconnect people with land, and land with people? Humankind was never meant to live in isolation, in concrete towers or prison walls or behind picket fences, alone.  

What if our community gardens and connection to nature are all part of our restoration to the full garden of Genesis that God always had in mind?  

And what if the Earth is an essential part of heaven right now? If you would like; why not take time this week to explore how nature might speak to you of heaven.