Everything came into being through the Word,
    and without the Word
    nothing came into being.

John 1:5

This week, Rebekah and I enjoyed a good 36 hours at our home in Wake Forest. Other than heading into Raleigh for Rebekah’s eye surgery followup, we spent as much time as possible enjoying the – and I’ll use one of my dad’s favorite words here – “glorious” outdoors.

One serendipity in response to my parents no longer owning the house next door is that I needed to modify the path than ran between the two entries. So I dug out the section that ran through their property then used the same materials to curve the path at the boundary then back around into a new seating area with a garden bench.

It has become the perfect shady place for enjoying the beautiful show of azalea and Japanese Maple and iris under the massive pine trees.

I often think about the fact that the great arc of the biblical narrative begins in a garden, reaches its climactic moments in a garden, and then completes the story – in Revelation 22 – in a garden once again, where the tree of life grows on both sides of the river of living water.

My soul finds peace:

I know that my soul finds peace here in our garden. Sometimes I acknowledge that my soul finds still more peace when I have also been working in that garden – but I think maybe I am starting to age out of that idea now!

Regardless, we found peace in ours this week, and I am grateful.

So this morning, Sunday April 14, let me suggest there is a garden – a sanctuary – waiting to offer peace, the kind that, as Paul promises in Philippians 4:7, “surpasses all understanding.” This is why I am in worship and at church, with this beautiful community of saints.

Some of you are reading this in North Carolina, some in Florida or California or Minnesota; others are in the UK and all over Europe. Wherever in this world you find yourself, peace perfect peace is ours because of God’s goodness and grace and mercy.

 “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I give to you not as the world gives. Don’t be troubled or afraid.” 

John 14:27

I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses…
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

Charles Miles (1913)