Why “The Garden Weekly?”

I’ve never really explained it, and I can understand why it may seem like a name more in line with a gardening magazine to some.

The Garden, Because It’s Tended

The first reason is the obvious one. The Garden Weekly is a curated set of seven articles, podcasts, videos, or books that we recommend you look at this week. It’s carefully tended and curated, like a garden. We try to choose content that is both challenging and nourishing. We choose content that challenges your preconceptions of what it means to be a follower of Messiah Jesus, and those that strengthen your resolve to live for him. We believe that our worldview as American Christians is limited, so we try to draw content from a variety of perspectives that will give you a broader view of what it means to live for Jesus.

The Garden, Because It’s Our Home

Why seven pieces of content? Seven is the number of creation. After seven days, God planted a garden, in the East, in Eden (Genesis 2:8). God created man outside of the garden and then placed him in it, as a test. Would we trust God, or choose what is right and wrong for ourselves? Our forefather and mother failed the test, as have we all. We were banished from what was to be our home into exile, into the wilderness.

But Jesus Messiah passed the test for us. Any who chooses a life of cross-bearing suffering rather than pleasurable, sinful death can have it. The reward is what we failed to achieve: eternal life and communion in true pleasure with God. Not a harps and baby angel pleasure, but a working, earthy pleasure of spreading the Garden of God to fill creation as his co-rulers. And not because we deserve it, but because it’s a gift.

The Garden is what we were made for. Its smell fills our nostrils in the cool summer breeze and the lapping waves. We taste it in the warm dinner conversation with close friends. We feel it in the hug of someone we love and who loves us.

We hope you also see the garden in some of what we share with you.