Scripture and Gardens

 "So, you find in our Jesus a personality that's so unique. He acts the same way with you and me. When He doesn't answer our prayers, He lets us hunger a day. When He doesn't do what we desire, He lets us hunger a second day. And when we're dissatisfied with His will, He makes us wait a third day in hunger and thirst until the time comes when He decides He has to help us." - Mother Angelica

I was reading this book by Mother Angelica about the Bible and scripture. It was very eye opening, inspiring and enriching. It was a different way of looking at scripture, meditating, understanding and imagining. I 've learned that's what we have to do, imagine the scene as if you were there. 

I really like how Mother Angelica writes and asks these questions to ourselves and what we would be thinking and experiencing, forming this prayer, this closeness with Jesus, with the living word of God. 

I feel it's taken a back seat in my life. To be still, to really pray and be attentive to God's word. Somehow, the beginning of the Easter season you forget that it's the most beautiful, joyful, glorious time, or at least its aimed to be. That's where prayer and scripture come in, to go back into God's word, and more time -sifting through it. 

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I've been thinking of a garden. The vision of a garden came to me throughout Lent. When I would see flowers in a chapel, I would think of a garden and visiting Jesus among plants and flowers. 

When I was on a run sometime last week, I passed by a house that always reminds me of a garden. It has overflowed plants and some wildflowers in front, it looks unkept but mysterious. It has a gate that secures the walkway, definitely like a mysterious and glorious garden enclosed.

 I feel there are a number of scriptures that pertain to this.

And also relating to gardens, I hadn't realized or paid attention that Jesus was buried in a garden on Good Friday. I guess it makes sense since Mary Magdalen thought he was the gardener when she went to the tomb on Easter morning. 

And also, going back to the Garden of Eden where God formed Adam and Eve and the fall of humankind and then the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus was in anguish and sweated blood on Holy Thursday. We can find God in a garden. St. Faustina in her diary mentions seeing Jesus while she is walking in a garden, so beautiful. Now with Easter joy, a garden of graces, and blessings, abundant with lilies.