36. Have a healthy, wholesome hobby.

A blessed Lent to all from Aster:

When I saw first the Maxim Emily gave me, I didn’t know what to write. We Africans really don’t know what hobbies are. But when we were growing up, girls had to learn what women should know, and boys had to learn what men should know. As a child, I loved landscape: trees, flowers and most of all watching the clouds. After school, we used to go and watch a nearby waterfall, where we saw little animals and plants that lived in the surrounding area.

I remember asking my neighbors for roots from their flower gardens; I used to plant them on my front porch and gave them a lot of care. Usually my flowers looked better than theirs, and they use to come and say, “What did you put in your flowers? They look more beautiful than ours!” So flowers became my “thing.” (This doesn’t mean I knew anything about them!)

Then I got older and left home, traveling to Europe and North America. There I saw beautiful manmade gardens. I started again with single potted plant, given to me by a friend; I started to take care of it, and then I couldn’t stop.

I think everyone has a hobby; it is an extra gift given by God. If you can dedicate time to a certain thing, and become good at it, and share it, it becomes a hobby.

Hobbies always bring us closer to someone and involve someone else. How? A friend of mine was told that she had cancer. I went to see her, and I gave her a tropical plant to take care of. A couple of years later, she wrote: “That flower gave me hope every day; I was eager to wake up and see if it would give one more flower today, and another one tomorrow.” Glory to God, she is still alive!

A hobby is anything that involves spending time with someone without planning or thinking; we do it because it is what we love to do, whether it is gardening, playing a sport or going to art shows. By sharing it with someone else, it also becomes an act of kindness, and it becomes part of our life.

The “Prayer Before Beginning a Task” (from our red prayer book) says “. . . so that it may be profitable to myself and others.” This reminds us that whatever we do affects someone else, too. For me, it something to do with gardening; when I am in the garden, any garden, I am with God. Even in the morning, looking at the trees, looking at people’s gardens as I do every morning on the way to work, it brightens up my day, and I praise God for all the beautiful things I see.

God is an amazing artist; He designed the first garden, and He put His first children, Adam and Eve, in it. (Genesis 2:7-8) I don’t know why, but we always visualize Heaven as a beautiful garden. When I work in the earth, I admire all of the beautiful, colorful things that come out of it, and I praise God: “This God, the God of my fathers, is so big, and I am so small. The God who created all of us and gave us everything, how wonderful, how wise, how patient, how amazing He is! I have no words in my sinful tongue to describe how kind He is to us.”

When we work in the garden, we learn humility, hope and patience. Humility – because there are such small beautiful creatures living on the earth, and that makes us understand that we too are very small in God’s eyes. Patience – because whatever we are working on in the garden, we are waiting for a harvest or result. Hope – because whatever we planted, if it didn’t come out well this time, we can try again next year.

In our Lord Jesus’ time of prayer before His Passion, He went to the Garden of Mount Olive, by Gethsemane. (Matthew 22:39) Many people imitate that when they need to walk alone with God. Whether in our own yard or a public park, a garden can be our escape from the world.

When I garden, then, only then, I find peace. I am so silent, as if I am listening to God. Sometimes I say the Jesus prayer, and sometimes I just smell the earth and the morning dew. I think my gift from God is gardening, and that is my healthy and wholesome hobby.

May our Lord plant His garden in our hearts. Amen.