Herbs

Lemon Thyme

Thyme

Rosemary

::~

From the Garden

To Please His Heavenly Father

Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief.

Isaiah 53:10

Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Ephesians 5:2
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Jesus did not wrestle his angry Father to the floor of heaven and take the whip out of his hand. He did not force him to be merciful to humanity. His death was not the begrudging consent of God to be lenient to sinners. No, what Jesus did when he suffered and died was the Father's idea. It was a breathtaking strategy, conceived even before creation, as God saw and planned the history of the world. That is why the Bible speaks of God's "purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began" (2 Timothy 1:9).

But what is most astonishing about this substitution of Christ for sinners is that it was God's idea. Christ did not intrude on God's plan to punish sinners. God planned for him to be there. One Old Testament prophet says, "It was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief" (Isaiah 53:10).

This explains the paradox of the New Testament. On the one hand, the suffering of Christ is an outpouring of God's wrath because of sin. But on the other hand, Christ's suffering is a beautiful act of submission and obedience to the will of the Father. So Christ cried from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). And yet the Bible says that the suffering of Christ was a fragrance to God. "Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2).

Oh, that we might worship the terrible wonder of the love of God! It is not sentimental. It is not simple. For our sake God did the impossible: He poured out his wrath on his own Son-- the one whose submission made him infinitely unworthy to receive it. Yet the Son's very willingness to receive it was precious in God's sight. The wrath bearer was infinitely loved.

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came to Die, John Pipe Reason #2

laundry and daffodil

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Daffodil

I hope you all aren't getting sick of seeing pictures of plants. 'Cause it's only April! There will be a LOT more.

Remember?

Lilacs and Rhubarb(I LOVE this picture above. Click on it and see how fuzzy it is!)

Bleeding Heart and Tulips
Pussy Willows

Budding

-You didn't know that I have a Caramel plant in my garden did ya? And you thought that they came from the store. Fooled you! :P -

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Once upon a time two explorers come upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. no gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man could be both smelled and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the skeptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?

-John Wisdom-

Evangelical scholar John Montgomery comments on the story. "In Christianity we do not have merely an allegation that the garden of this world is tended by a loving Gardener; we have the actually, empirical entrance of the Gardener into the human scene in the person of Jesus Christ (John 20:14-15), and this entrance is verifiable by way of his resurrection.

-Know Why You Believe by Paul E. Little pg. 14-15

A Promise

(Glory of Snow)
(Rose)
(Tulip)
(Iris)(Crocus)
(Crocus)
(Crocus)
(Boxwood)
(Onion)
(Glory of Snow)
(Crocus)
(Crocus)
(Squill)
(Chinese Peony)
(Squill)
(Violet)
(Bleeding Heart)

Of More to Come