“Self” be crucified and slain
And buried deep, nor rise again
And may all efforts be in vain
Unless they be for OTHERS.
So when my work on earth is done,
And my new work in heav’n’s begun,
May I forget the crown I’ve won,
While thinking still of OTHERS.
Yes, others, Lord, yes others,
Let this my motto be;
Help me to live for others,
That I may live like Thee.
Amen.
—Charles D. Meigs, d. 1869
13 Cf. Proverbs 3:34.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.
—Deuteronomy 6:4–5
Are you a gardener? I am a bit of an amateur. My wife is leagues beyond my capabilities, but I do have a particular few items in our yard to which I tend. At summer’s end, things need to be done to tend to the garden.
For instance, I grow peppers, but we had a lot of rain this summer, and too much rain does not make for healthy pepper plants. In years past, I have merely cut them back for the following year’s growth. This year, I just pulled out the unhealthy plants and tossed them away. There were other plants in the yard that—as annuals—had come to their natural end and they too needed to be uprooted and tossed. To make the garden flourish in the next season of its life, some things simply needed to be rooted out.
Idolatry, the worship or devotion of one’s life to anything that would supplant God, is one thing that is most consistently condemned throughout the Judeo-Christian story. This passage from Deuteronomy is somewhat of God’s “one-liner” about his rightful place in the hearts of his children. Written about 1400 bce, after the Exodus from Egypt and before entrance into the Promised Land, most of the book is simply a long reminder of Moses to the Israelites about all that God has done for them, all God is doing for them, and all God wants to do for them. In return, they should constantly be on guard about allowing anything or anyone to take God’s place.
Now we sometimes see that as a negative. God is occasionally described as a “jealous God,” desiring no competition for His rightful place in our lives.14 But is God jealous for His sake or for our own? The testimony of scripture would be that God is not trying to squelch us by restricting our worship and devotion to Him, and Him alone—but really trying to benefit us. Why? Because putting anything in God’s place drives us away from God and what He wants for us.
Blaise Pascal, a famous French mathematician and philosopher, put it like this: “What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.”15
If we try to stuff anything but God into that God-shaped hole in our lives, we find ourselves discontented and dissatisfied. A passion for God is diluted with other things, and so the fullness of God cannot be experienced. But if we pour into Pascal’s “God-shaped hole” God, our lives begin to take on an order that results in spiritual health, the fruit of abandoning idolatry.
C. S. Lewis speaks to this as well. “God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way . . . God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.”16
Notice the brief title of this meditation, “Tending to the Garden.” The likelihood is that all of us struggle with idolatry—and I suspect Pascal, Lewis, and good old Moses did as well. So, it is less of a once-and-for-all kind of practice, and more of a once, and again, and again. This fall, I had to get out there in my garden and uproot some things for the sake of a healthier garden. When it comes to tending the soul that is your garden, what might need rooting out? Tend to your garden.
Moses put it out there, “Love God with all of your heart . . . soul and strength.” Our Jewish friends call this the great Shema. It serves as a centerpiece of their morning and evening worship. Moses did not cut any corners—Love God with all, means all—and it does not mean some or most. Use a moment or two to acknowledge what might be getting in the way of that “all,” and then ask God to help you root it out—better yet, ask God to do the work. He is the better gardener!
A Prayer
O Lord, let me not henceforth desire health or life, except to spend them for You, with You, and in You. You alone know what is good for me; do, therefore, what seems best to You. Give to me, or take from me; . . . and may [I] equally adore all that comes to me from You; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
—Blaise Pascal, d. 1662
14 See Exodus 34:14; Deuteronomy 4:24.
15 Blaise Pascal, Pensées (New York: Penguin Books, 1966), 75.
16 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 1980), 50.
