Garden

The garden pictures hope. A waiting expectancy, for the Lord will bring the seasons, the sun and rain. A expectancy that engenders nurturing, sowing, weeding, sweat, work. Picking green beans--the hopes that surround us. Retirement. A new start at college. A baby. Successful surgery. Finding a house or selling a house. A night to relax. Salvation for a prodigal child. Good weather for an event. Big and little hopes. Each person, if you could look into their heart pocket, carries around hopes that are being watered with prayers, weeded by small decisions, nurtured in waiting.

Jesus the Vine and our Father the Gardener too is growing a garden. He too has hope: promises that are yet to come. Love himself, Wisdom himself, Life himself, prays for us in John 17. He expresses his heart. What a mystery, where we get a peek of God talking to God, the inner life of the Trinity. We get a peek into what Christ longs for us, his heart for us. We get a peek into what Love hopes (1 Cor. 13:7).

A few themes:

Glory for the Father and Son (17:1, 4)

Eternal life, communion!!! for all of his, to really, truly know (17:2-8)

Our unity with the Triune God that secondarily (but necessarily) flows out to unity among the church (17:6-25)

Our joy (17:13)

Sure promise of protection (17:12, 15)

Our sanctification (17:16)

To think that my Lord himself desires that we “may be with me where I am, to see my glory” (17:24). To be with him, to see him. This is his heart too! And my heart leaps at that. Pause and think that our High Priest even now, at this moment, in the Saturday morning or later that you are reading this, the summer morning I am picking beans, is seated as the crowned High Priest and interceding for his own. He offers prayers, and he offers his own: his own faith, his own sanctification (17:19), his own power to protect, to us.

What fruit, what a harvest! Let me, let us, set our hearts on these