The Garden -- an attempt at allegory

The Garden

The garden was a beautiful place when the Gardener first planted it. It was green and luscious and filled with beautiful flowers, their faces all turned upward in the radiant sun. The Gardener enjoyed His garden immensely; He visited it often and talked with His flowers. He watered it carefully and tended it gently so that it would flourish. Oh, it was a beautiful place!

But there was a weed in the garden, a sneaky weed that grew down low, creeping and crawling through the garden, chewing at the roots of the flowers. The sunlight and careful watering that so nurtured the flowers also, sadly, nurtured the weed. It grew and grew, entangling more and more flowers, eating at more and more roots.

Slowly, the flowers died off and the weed became stronger and bigger, bigger and stronger. It no longer cowered down low among the roots; it became bold and powerful, climbing over the tops of the flowers and greedily snatching all the sunlight for itself. The flowers, shaded by the bitter leaves of the weed, gasped for sunlight but found only the dark shade of the weed. Slowly, sadly, the flowers perished in the dark undergrowth of the weed, while the weed continued to thrive.

The weed spread its possessive arms out over the dead and dying flowers, absorbing the last bit of sunlight on its back, and laughed over its shoulder at the Gardener, who watched as His beloved garden, once so colorful and beautiful, turned into a snarly, tangled mess.

A single tear slid from the Gardener’s eye and dropped down into the sorry, lost garden. The tear found its way through the fingers of the weed onto the soil. It so happened that at just the spot where that tear landed a small seed was struggling to grow. The tear, which slipped through the weed, brought with it just a little bit of light, just enough for a tiny root to take hold and a tender shoot to sprout.

That tender shoot grew, somehow, and pushed its way up through the weed. As it pushed up, light filtered down, and more little roots took hold, and more shoots shot up, and more light came down. The weed was very angry, but it couldn’t stop these little shoots from popping up. The more shoots that came up, the more light that came down. It wasn’t long before the shoots began to blossom, and there, amid the ugly, gnarly, bitter arms and legs and fingers of the weed, flowers bloomed.

The Gardener looked at the garden, still so ugly, and saw beauty. He did not rip away the weed but allowed it to stay; He allowed it to menace the tender flowers in order to make them stronger, but He kept it pruned enough so that a little light could shine. Some of the flowers succumbed to the weed and died, but many did not. Many kept their faces turned upward and struggled to be victorious over the weed. These faithful flowers in turn dropped their seeds, which the Gardener watered with His tears. Many of those seeds became valiant flowers, struggling with the weed and seeking life in the light.

The garden will never be as beautiful as it was at first until the day the Gardener decides to yank out that weed, but the flowers are there and they are a delight to the Gardener; and they know that some day, when the time is right, the Gardener will indeed pull that weed out and throw it into the fire. The flowers live for that day.

But, in the meantime, they bloom in spite of the weed, and they drop their seeds and nurture them so the seeds in turn grow into flowers. They keep their eyes on the Gardener and their faces turned toward the Sonlight. And He delights in them, and they in Him.