Have you ever walked in a flower garden so early dew was still on the flowers and the grass? An awesome, holy hush was everywhere. Didn't it feel as if God was just past that next branch or tree? Or beside you?
Well, He's also to be found in the stinkiest gutter of Calcutta, filled with the dead and dying, but a garden scene is where our sensitive, poetic souls like to imagine God walks and talks with us. He met with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden; maybe that's why He made gardens.
An old gospel hymn conjures up this image in a very winsome way. I have loved it since before I was a teenager. In fact it caught my imagination in such a way that I began to believe my Lord and I walked and talked in our own mystical garden of prayer.
Our family had nothing but a plain and necessary vegetable garden for food, and I didn't very much like to be sent out to weed it. However, in my imagination I could be transported to a lovely park-like garden, filled with banks of flowers, fruit trees in bloom, and hedges of various rosebushes, just dripping with luscious roses, which glistened with diamond-like dew drops.
I confess that sometimes in my daydreams, that person I met there was an imaginary lover/husband. (Watch for him in the sequel to Ruthe's Secret Roses!) But most of the time, I tried to save the present tense garden visits for my dear Lord Jesus. Whenever I had a crisis to work out, I'd take off to be alone with Him in prayer, to I'd tell Him all about it.
After a while I'd relax and Bible verses or things I'd learned in church would come to mind, and I'd realize there was the Lord's answer. I knew what to do.
For a long time I thought I was maybe the only one who knew of this secret garden of prayer and intimacy with our Lord and Saviour. Seldom did I read or hear of anyone else doing this. It was so precious and dear to me though, that I wove such a lifestyle into the heroine of my novel.
When I built my web site around the book, I put the words to the song, and several versions of the music that I found on the internet there too. It just seemed appropriate. (Want to see and listen to it too? https://Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/rsr/IntheGarden.shtml)
I've been getting more feedback from that page than any other, and I'm discovering that there are lots of people who also treasure this image of meeting with God in a secret garden setting. Some may have a real rose garden in which they walk and pray, but I suspect most of them do as I do, and just rise up early in the morning, when no one else is up to interrupt, to have a lovely quiet time, a hushed and holy time, to have a little talk with Jesus.
You too may have such precious times with Jesus, who listens and loves you very much! If you have a garden or a park nearby where you can take early dawn walks to pray, then by all means go there.
But even if you are stuck in a wheelchair, or tied up in a stryker bed, where they flip you over every so often, or if you are surrounded with mess and noise, and far too many things to do - you can still slip off to this prayer garden of your own any time of the day or night, and get the help you need.
Do you need to talk and unload all that's stirring around in your mind, then tell Him. Jesus will listen ever so intently and right through to the end.
If you need to ask questions or for some advice, ask away. Then listen quietly, for He's likely to slip you the answer in your intuitive spirit, and you can't hear that if you're still stormy with emotions.
If you just need a hug because no one else seems to love you or so much as grasp what you're about, then imagine Jesus giving you a hug. You'll be amazed at the effect it will have on you!
Feel free to shed tears when you need to, for there is a promise in Psalm 56:8 that He saves up all our tears in bottles. (He's got rows of full bottles of mine!)
Come! You're cordially invited to come into this garden alone too. You won't stay alone. You'll walk and talk with Jesus, and experience the joy of this precious secret garden of prayer.
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Ruth Marlene Friesen makes friends wherever she goes!
Her friends become her rare roses at Ruthes-SecretRoses.com
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