Isaiah 65:17–25 The Garden Place

 

We’re here today to say goodbye to dad, a little delayed, but still an important time for us as a family to remember a good father who worked hard and taught us about honour and faithfulness. When I asked my siblings about what Dad’s favourite Bible verses were, we couldn’t think of any specific verse or verses because our dad’s faith was a quiet faith; more lived out than spoken. Dad wanted us to know Jesus, wanted us to have a good relationship with God. He worked extra jobs to make sure that we could go to the Christian school, he faithfully supported the church, and he spent many hours using his gifts of woodworking and handyman skills to help out anyone who needed an extra hand. One of dad’s biggest regrets is that he was never asked to serve on any church council. He had always wanted to have the opportunity to serve the church this way, especially as a deacon, but the churches never recognized his passion for the church, or his talents this way.

Dad loved the outdoors. He was a fisherman, a hunter, and later on in life, a gardener. This was a big part of the reason he and mom bought their place out on Highway 597. It allowed him to build a huge workshop and have a small farm. He spent a lot of time working on those acres, improving them, and creating a safe place for the entire family. This image in Isaiah 65 describes Dad’s image of heaven as a home, a place to work hard, enjoy the fruits of your labour, and to be with loved ones sharing a good meal and a glass of Bokma gin at the end of the day, not quite the fruit of the vineyard, but close. This passage in Isaiah is a picture of what shalom looks like, good relationships with God, with each other, with ourselves, and with creation around us.

Vineyards and gardens are a great example of God providing, of flourishing, and of plenty. We see it starting in the Garden of Eden, where God placed Adam and Eve to care for it. Gardens are places we create and maintain today to provide food and to grow beautiful plants that bring joy, such as the plants and flowers we fill our homes with and give to others to show them that we are thinking about them. Dad loved gardening, especially in his later years; growing kale and garlic with Caroline for the market garden where people were eager to buy his produce because of its high quality. It was also a time where Dad could meet and chat with others who enjoyed gardening like he did. The garden was a place of peace for Dad.

Verses 20 and 23 talks about children dying before having an opportunity to really know life, of adults dying young, and about children of misfortune. Dad and Mom dedicated their lives and our family to give children who didn’t have a safe place, a place of safety that they could call home, a place where they could have family when their own families weren’t always a safe place. Fostering was a big part of who Dad and Mom were and they taught us that family is all about relationship more so than blood.

Our two sisters, Theresa and Toni came into our family through adoption, but they were never treated as less, but always as full family, along with Glennie, who came into our family at just a few days old and spent his entire life as part of the Boer clan. Toni and Glennie went home too early, as Isaiah talks about here, but God used Dad and Mom to welcome them into our mixed up, sometimes messed up, family. It always helped me to understand that being an adopted child of God is all about belonging and being accepted as precious and dearly loved.  

But this passage also reminds us that sin infects us all, that there are infants who do only live a few days, that there are wars and sounds of weeping and crying, that sin is why we’re here today because sin brought death to us as a penalty for our sin. We know Dad wasn’t a perfect man, he had his challenges with anger and frustration at times and wasn’t always able to articulate his anger well. Yet he always acted out of deep love for his family and wanted the best for us, even if we didn’t always appreciate it.

Isaiah writes, “They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands.” These verses remind me of the house Dad built in Murillo, and there are lots of stories of building this house with Dad, running on the rafters, almost falling through, knocking a box of roofing nails into the gravel around the house and having to pick them all up again, and the joy of living in a small village with good family friends close by. But Dad and Mom couldn’t afford to keep the house and had to sell. I can picture Dad on a plot of land right now looking it over and planning out the house he’s going to build next and the garden plot in the back.

We mourn with hope because Jesus came to take our sin on himself so that we can know the peace that comes from being set free from our sin, that death is now a door we walk through to go to heaven. When Dad went home to the Lord last fall, Jesus was right there with him, as he tells his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” Jesus came to escort Dad to the place that was ready for him in God’s mansion; a place at the banquet table where Jesus is the host, and our loved ones who have gone on before Dad are there with him.

Dad is with Jesus now, in a place where he’s home and healed and his dementia is gone and he can enjoy his new life and the use again the gifts God has given him for creating beauty with wood, and growing his garden, watered by the river of the water of life, and at the end of the day, sitting on the bank with a fishing rod in his hand as we see in Revelation 22:1–4, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.”

The day will come when we will see Dad and Mom again, until that time, we are the fruit that they have created, families who know and follow Jesus and work to create places of shalom around us that reflect Jesus’ love and grace to others.