INTIMACY I: Being a Good Gardener

Proverbs 24:30-34, “I went by the field of the slothful, and by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding; and there it was, all overgrown with thorns; its surface was covered with nettles; its stone wall was broken down. When I saw it, I considered it well; I looked on it and received instruction; a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest; so your poverty will come like a prowler, and your want like an armed man.”

Marriage and family are like a garden. It is a private and intimate gift that God gives us; a relationship and a revealing that cannot happen outside of marriage. That is why the devil is trying to destroy marriages. Marriage opens us up in a way that does not happen in other relationships. It is an intimacy that God allows us to have and to develop. It is not always the case that marriages achieve the intimacy that God intends. We may fulfill passion and sex, but that is not intimacy. Intimacy is a revealing of who we are, and it is only as we open up that God change us in the way He sees fit. When we study about the garden, we find that it is a place that develops an environment. It is not like a force that comes from somewhere suddenly, but it is something planted and designed skillfully. In Africa many of the people have great gardens, and they skillfully make them to attract birds, and that is what God wants. He wants us to plant certain plants in our lives that will bring the environment to attract certain people in our lives, to open them up.

In verse 30 it speaks of a field. A field always speaks of enlargement. Western society does not always understand through its culture because the culture described in the Bible is often closer to Africa and other places that are not so westernized. When we are in a different environment and are cut off from the things that fill us, we realize whether or not we are really fulfilled. Our fulfillment, at times, has more to do with entertainment then anything else. Entertainment came from the lineage of Cain. He was the first one who brought entertainment through music and the city life.

For me to be fulfilled, I cannot be lazy. I am not talking about being lazy to work or provide for your family or making money, but lazy in not bringing true fulfillment to your wife or husband or your children. Most of the time our emphasis is on holidays, sex, and food. To come into the fulfillment in our lives, where our inner man can find rest with ourselves and with each other and rest from striving, we have to come into a Sabbath rest. The curse of Israel was that they did not come into rest. They were rebellious. God said that He would not bring them into His rest. The result of not coming into that rest, in our marriages and our relationships, is that we become lazy. We think there is no reason to work at it because it will not work anyway. We become lazy to let God do what He wants to do in our lives. To have a new harvest in our marriage, we have to plow and sow the ground. That love from twenty years ago is not enough for today. It has to develop new levels of understanding and communication, and knowing who we are with our partner and in knowing God.

In His Love,
      Sigi

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