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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Full Circle Garden

Byron Smith

Full Circle Garden #1

It's a privilege to acknowledge you as the Creator and to acknowledge also the fact that not only did you create us and create the earth, but you have indicated in your Word that you are the master gardener and that what you do in our life is what you want us to do in the garden that we can see with our own eyes.

We ask that you'll be here and be present in Jesus' name.

We can put this first screen, slide up on the screen.

I want to let you know that we're trying to present the why and how to experiencing a lot more from your garden.

And there's a really popular book out titled, Start With Why.

And I really believe that starting with why is really important.

That I think is a really important thing because Gardening costs money, it takes time, it takes effort, it interrupts your schedule, you can't just go here or go there whenever you feel like it.

And so how do you motivate yourself to do something that is certainly not necessarily the easiest thing to do and a lot of that comes down to why.

And I'm going to begin by going back to Genesis And I believe that this point right here that I'm going to share this morning is not only the underpinning for gardening, but should be kind of the foundation or the basis for life in general, and I think it should inform us even on how we should garden.

And I'm going to quote here, You can get the same thought from the King James or other versions, but I really like the way that it's put here in the Common English Bible.

It says, there was still no human being to farm the fertile land, and the Lord God formed the human from what?

We always hear we were formed from the dust of the earth.

Now the fact is is that I have a hard time believing that God actually used dust to form man because obviously he's supernatural and so he can do anything he wants because of his abilities.

But the idea of shaping something from topsoil certainly sounds a lot more practical and it certainly is an interesting concept.

He blew into his nostrils the breath of life and the human came to life.

Now then moving a little bit later as it goes through this story, it says the Lord God took the human and settled him in the Garden of Eden to what?

Now the word to that I've highlighted there is, according to the dictionary, is a word that's used to indicate purpose.

So the reason that God put us in the garden was to farm it and take care of it.

So when you look here at the sequence of events, God planted God planted a garden in Eden, and that garden that He planted needed to be what?

Have you ever seen a garden that didn't need to be taken care of?

So when you actually very carefully go through Genesis 2, 4 to 8, You actually see this clearly presented.

God created man to fill a need that the garden had.

God, you know, we often think of this, that God made the world for us.

We're up here, we're the king, and everything there was made to serve our needs, our wishes, our desires, any want that we could imagine, God already put it in there.

The animals were there for us to have pets, to enjoy, and the food was there for us to eat, and the weather was perfect.

When Jesus came to this earth, he debunked that theory.

He said that in the world you hear this concept that those who are at the top are served by everybody else, but he said, it is not to be so for you.

He said, the 1 who's at the top is to be the servant of all.

In fact, he said, you call me master and Lord and that's right, I am.

So you see, God Actually, God actually has this deal that God created the world for us to serve, to take care of.

So, you see here in these first 2 sequences of events that are put here in Genesis, God planted the garden and the garden needed to be farmed, so he created man from the earth and put him in the garden to take care of it.

Now I'm going to try to illustrate this with a simple circle here, okay?

God intended that man would contribute to the garden.

We're supposed to take care of it and to meet its needs, and in turn, the garden contributes to man.

Now, I hope you'll see in a minute why that's a really important concept.

Here from Desire of Ages it says, sin is marred God's perfect work, yet his handwriting remains.

The selfish heart of man that lives unto itself.

Only us think about our needs, our wants, our desires, plan and work accordingly.

It says there's no leaf of the forest or lowly blade of grass but as its ministry.

Every tree and shub and leaf pours forth that element of life without which neither man nor animal could live." So that's what 1 of the things that the garden is doing for you.

Now of course it's producing food and other things too, but it's also producing the element of life, and we think of oxygen, and I would like to say that there is other things that I think are included in that besides oxygen.

But anyway, it says that man and animal in turn minister to the life of tree and shrub.

So here you see this concept that I just mentioned being described there that there's this circle where man contributes to the needs of the earth and the earth contributes to the needs of man.

It's a perfect circle and we see that further described here in the next paragraph in Desire of Ages, page 21.

It says, turning from all lesser representations we behold God and Jesus.

Looking unto Jesus we see that it is the glory or character of our God to give.

In these words is set forth a great principle which is the law of life for the universe.

Pastor Wohlberg this morning talked about the law, the law of love.

The reason it's the law of love is because it is all about taking to give all things Christ received from God but He took to give, and thus through Christ the circle of beneficence, or the circle of love is complete, representing the character of the great giver, the law of life.

Everything in the universe, save the selfish heart of man, everything in the universe is designed around this principle that it functions to benefit something else.

And in so doing, in functioning to benefit something else, it is actually benefiting itself.

When you look at the honeybee going out and pollinating the flower.

It is continuing the life so there'll be more flowers in the future for it to live on.

It is getting the nectar from the plant for its own needs, but it's giving to the plant the pollination that the plant needs.

Everything there, and as you start understanding more and more of the science of biology from a Christian perspective, It's amazing how this principle is everywhere.

And hopefully we can understand that more.

Now, to finish up this, you might say, the philosophy of gardening point, I have what I've coined the packed cup principle.

I learned this text, I remember, in primaries.

Give, and it will be given unto you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be put into your bosom.

And notice the next sentence, for with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

It's the size of container that you're using, right?

So it says the same measure or the same container that you used to give with is the same container you're going to get given back to you with 1 caveat.

God's going to press it down, shake it together, pack it down, and it will still run over.

So in other words, in other words, The more you give, the more you're going to receive back.

Now I want you to keep that in mind because in a couple minutes I'm going to apply that to the garden.

The same container size you use to give with is the container size that God fills up to give you back and Any time that you give it will be given back to you But using the same container, so if we give a if we use a small cup What are we going to receive a small cup So there's a lot of people who don't feel like they're getting much out of their garden.

To a large degree because it's the cup size they're using or the container size they're using.

Now that container size I would hasten to add is not necessarily the measure of the effort you put into it.

I believe there should be some intelligence put into it and it's the measure of intelligence you put.

You can work really really hard and get nothing back but you can't work really really intelligent and get nothing back.

So intelligent gardening is what is really I think going to be talked about here And here's this principle here.

You give to the garden that same circle, you give to the garden and whatever container size you give will be given back to you stuffed, packed and overflowing.

So the garden will always give you back more than you put into it if you use a large intelligent sized container or a large container measuring the intelligent input.

And this is where I think that we are today.

It's very interesting if you look at USDA statistics and you look at how many farms there were in 1950 and how many farms there are today, you see that there are fewer and fewer and fewer people producing more and more food and what are the rest of us doing?

Full Circle Garden #2

Father in heaven, we're thankful that you have given us a chance to participate with you in ministry, to be in the world and maybe in our little tiny corner of the world what you are in the universe, a servant of all.

Lord, I ask that you will bless our hearts to understand what you would like us to do and how we can be enriched by it.

I'd like to begin with reading a passage from Matthew chapter 13.

And Jesus says, "'Behold, a sower went forth to sow.

And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up.

Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth, and so on.

We're very familiar with this particular parable.

And when he comes down to verse 8, other seed fell on good ground and brought forth fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

So the disciples came to him and asked for the explanation of that, and in explaining of that, and in explaining the parable, Jesus stated that the seed represented what?

And, he also stated that in the parable, the soil represented my mind, the heart, the mind, obviously it comes down to our thought processes.

When you look at gardening, the profound, the most profound thing, and yesterday I went through some of the blessings and benefits that you can get from a garden, and the last 1 on there was the spiritual understanding.

Christ's object lessons, there's a very fascinating statement where Ellen White explains that parable, and she says that the parable of the sower is not valued as it should be because, she says, the same laws that govern earthly seed sowing govern the sowing of the seeds of truth in our heart.

In other words, if you want to understand how to have a real dynamic spiritual experience, what do you do?

The same principles, the same operations, and the same laws that govern how the seeds grow in your garden are directly transferable to your own spiritual life.

And This morning, I want to look at nutrition, and I think as Christians we understand the importance of nutrition, spiritual nutrition and food.

And I'd like to, just by way of review just a few slides here, the focus on how you can build nutritious soil or soil nutrition for nutrient dense food.

In other words, how do you get the healthiest, best food that you can get and the best yield that you can get.

And I know that some of this is going to be maybe a little bit technical.

But I want to keep all week long, keep in mind the essential principle that I think is so important here.

The Lord God took the human, settled him in the Garden of Eden for the purpose of farming it and taking care of it.

The reason why we were put in the Garden of Eden was to take care of the farm, or take care of the garden.

Now it is also true that it goes the other way.

So you see here God planted a garden in Eden.

There was a need, and so God created man for the purpose of meeting that need.

And it's illustrated in this circle that Desire of Ages, page 21, tells us is the essence of God's law.

Man contributes to the garden, and the garden contributes to man.

We minister to the needs of the plant, and the plant ministers to the needs of us.

That is the essence of God's law, and the essence of His character.

And I also yesterday, the packed cup principle in the garden, give and will be given unto you.

The same measure, the same size container we use to give with is what is going to be given back to us, but God's principle is that whatever we give with, he gives it back, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.

So the more we want to invest in something, the more we invest in giving, we get it multiplied back to us.

But this concept of ministry, everything having a ministry and supplying the needs of something else is foundational to understanding how to most effectively garden.

I also reviewed for anybody who wasn't here that there are 6 different benefits that you can get from gardening as an incentive.

A better performing brain, improved mental health, stress relief and enhanced health and safe food and spiritual understanding.

And I think that that last 1, people who don't do things really practical like gardening have a hard time taking the abstract spiritual truths and putting them into concepts that people can clearly understand.

And I think that's especially true in dealing with the youth because young people, children have a hard time understanding abstract spiritual concepts.

Their mind, that part of their mind is not developed.

He wants that spiritual truth to be understood by showing them hands-on, tactile, touch and feel things that they can understand and the garden is a fantastic place for that to happen.

There are 3 different aspects, dimensions, components you want to say of soil.

Now, when you look at dirt, what do you see?

It's brown, maybe reddish like we have in the desert southwest.

It might be black, it might be gray, there's different colors, but it just looks like a blob.

In that thing that looks so dirty, you have the physical component, you have the chemical component and you have a biological component.

Now like I said, this might sound a little bit technical, but I want to begin by looking at the physical aspect of dirt.

I'm not talking about its temperature, its color, I'm going to look at how the physical part of soil affects plant growth and how it affects you as the gardener.

The physical components are very, very important and on our farm in Arizona as well as Good News Farm here, there are a number of times that I have seen what appears to be nutritional deficiencies and are nutritional deficiencies in the plant but they exist not because the nutrient isn't there But because the physical property of the soil is such that the plant is not capable of taking it up.

So there's some very important parts to that.

And the physical component provides air spaces.

Well, you need oxygen, Of course, for roots and for the microbes.

But in addition to that, did you know, Do you know how many creatures actually live in the soil?

There are far more creatures under the surface of the soil than there are above the surface of the soil.

There's more life happening below the grass than what you can see.

Kind of makes you think of this whole Ephesians 6 thing that…where it says that we wrestle not against flesh and blood.

There are unseen elements happening around us.

There's a whole life that we can't see in the great controversy, and there's a whole life we can't see happening below the soil.

But all those creatures need space to live.

And they have to have an air pocket essentially to live in.

I mean they can't they can't live inside of a rock.

So you need you need those air spaces and the air spaces also provide for water drainage.

Now that's less important in Arizona where I come from but it's certainly a very important factor and of course Most living organisms need oxygen to survive, and so the airspaces allow for roots and oxygen and simply real estate to live on.

And water holding capacity, how often do you have to water your garden?

How much water is actually being held there?

The air spaces provide for water holding capacity of course.

And that water actually is where all of the chemical reactions happen.

If you want to get fertilizer, nutrients into your plant, it has to happen in the presence of water.

There's no other way that that can happen.

Your plant doesn't go down there and pick up a little chunk of iron and pull it into the root and work it up the plant.

And so the physical property determines, or the physical characteristics of the soil determine how much water is going to be there and how well those different things are happening.

And this is probably 1 that people don't think of too often, and I've alluded to it already, the surface area.

You've got to have a lot of surface area for those different creatures to live on.

Now, when you look at this particular slide, there are 3 different components.

There's actually, when you look at soil, they only consider 3 particular components.

Clay, you see way over there at the far right, and silt and sand.

Now gravel of course isn't considered part of soil, it can be in your garden but it's not considered part of soil.

Now most people aren't aware of this but the difference between that ugly clay soil that you might have in your garden and an absolutely beautiful fertile loam that your neighbor has that you wish you had, or that sandy soil that dries out all the time, for all intents and purposes, the only difference between any kind of soil is the relative blend of particle sizes.

Small particle sizes, the clay, have the characteristics they have almost exclusively because of how small they are.

Sand has the properties that it has almost exclusively because of the size that it is.

And so when you look at these things, it certainly doesn't seem that way when you look at the dirt.

Full Circle Garden #3

Yesterday and the day before, we talked a lot about not using animal manures and stuff for some of the dangers that are found with them, the antibiotics, the growth hormones, all the food-borne illnesses like your E.

I've had several people come up to me and ask, well, you know, I've got my own chickens or I've got my own horse.

That's a different story, because you know what you're feeding your chickens and you know what you're feeding your horse, and you know that you're not walking up to them with the needle of antibiotics every day and doing that.

The only thing I would recommend on your chickens, check the food that you're feeding them because even a lot of the food that they just sell in feed stores is laced with arsenic.

So do check if you're feeding them scratch or whatever it's called, do check the source.

Promise that this morning would be a little more practical, not so much of the scientific theory.

But before we actually get into that, some of you may remember the parable.

I'm going to quote again from Matthew 13, 3.

He spoke many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow.

Jesus gives the explanation of the parable, and He said, the seed is the Word of God.

And Then he says, those by the wayside of those that hear, then comes the devil and takes away the word out of their heart, lest they should believe and be saved.

Then we get another piece of the puzzle in the next parable that Jesus told about the tares.

He says, Another parable put forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a man which sowed good seed in his field, but while man slept, the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way." Just a side note there, 1 wonders, the enemy comes in and sows his tares while men are sleeping.

That means the devil is putting his thoughts into our mind when we're not aware of it.

So if you put all of these things together, you see that the soil represents the mind.

Seeds are thoughts, but you notice that there's 2 kinds of seeds.

There's good seed, and there's weed seed or bad seed.

And so you have good thoughts, which are unselfish thoughts, thoughts of ministry, thoughts that are in harmony with God's Word.

And then you have the weed seeds, which are selfish, influenced by the principles of Satan.

And you see also in these parables that there's a harvest.

So there's going to be 2 kinds of harvest, the fruit of the Spirit and the works of the flesh as we see in the New Testament.

In Christ's object lessons, I made reference to this statement yesterday, page 33, it says, because of its simplicity, the parable of the sower is not valued as it should be.

From the natural seed cast into the soil, Christ desires to lead our thoughts to the gospel seed, the sowing of which results in bringing man back to his loyalty to God." That's a lot in that 1 sentence there.

The way you get back to your loyalty to God is the result of sowing seed.

I'd like to comment more on that, but because of time I won't.

He who gave the parable of the tiny seed is the sovereign of heaven, and the same laws that govern earthly seed sowing govern the sowing of the seeds of truth." And this is where, I'm going to get to the conclusion here, the difference between the outcome between having a weed-filled, unproductive garden and a garden with a great harvest, depends on the seeds that you sow, to a greater or lesser degree.

Now if this applies not just to your garden, if this applies also to your own spiritual life and it applies to the ministry that you do to other people, and particularly if it applies to what you do with your children, then what's important is, what's most important would be, I should say, the seeds you choose to sow.

Now it's interesting to me, I get, being in the business that I am, I get a lot of seed catalogs.

And the companies that sell seeds, and I've already answered the question I'm going to ask but I did that on purpose.

The companies that sell the seeds, what is the product that they are actually going to ship me if I pay them?

But if I get their catalog out, what do I see in the catalog?

I don't know of any other business where what you buy is not what's described in the offerings in the catalog.

When it comes to gardening, nobody cares what the seed looks like.

Nobody wants to know the specifications on the seed, the weight, the color, the shape.

Those things are not at all important to the gardener.

What is important to the gardener is what the harvest is going to be.

So you sit down, if you are a real avid gardener, it might be in the middle of winter, and you get out the seed catalog and you say, I want a watermelon this year.

I am trying to get a great tasting watermelon by the 4th of July.

And so you look at the description of the watermelon varieties that they sell there, and you can almost salivate seeing the juicy flesh and the description of how sweet it is and the weight and all this kind of stuff.

That's what you are buying even though the product you receive is a seed.

The funny thing is that when people actually think about, for example, their children, or their grandchildren, or your own spiritual life, we don't start with the desired harvest and then select the seed, very often.

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