Dean's Message

We go to gardens for a wide variety of purposes. Sometimes we go there because we have to. The weeds have gotten just too high to ignore any more or the need for watering has reached crisis point. I guess that is not the reason for your visit with us over this weekend, otherwise you’d be at home! Sometimes, we go to gardens to forget. Perhaps to put a tough day behind us, or a tough year and to bring something new and comforting into our minds. Sometimes, we go to a garden to remember things, perhaps to refresh a precious memory or to focus on a precious person. We go to a garden for all kinds of reasons.

As you come to the gardens that have been opened this weekend I wonder if you would take the opportunity to focus on the later reasons for going to a garden. Take the time to put behind you the normal pre-occupations of life maybe even to entertain new thoughts if you haven’t had them before. Could such intricacies, beauty and our responses to them be better explained by a designer, and for a purpose, rather than by chance? Take the time to remember somebody and respond to them. Perhaps remember that Jesus has come, has lived, died and risen for you, and so give him thanks, change a priority, go to Church or pick up your Bible and read it, if it has been awhile.

I love the tranquillity of a garden. Gardens help me to catch a glimpse of what will be the eternal future of those who put their trust in Jesus. The beauty and peace of a garden breaks me out of the loud and busy pressures of the day to day and helps me to lift my eyes to what really matters in the end. May you have a blessed and meaningful time in the gardens this weekend.

Chris Brennan.