Pondering Three Gardens

Sometimes while I work in the garden I ponder some of the things that are significant about life. Beautiful plants springing to live bring pleasure to the eye and satisfaction to the belly, they relax and uplift a gardener as he or she participates in cultivating the lives of plants. As I worked in my garden early one morning, it being my third garden, I began pondering the symbolism of the number three.

While a junior in high school my literature teacher introduced symbolism in writing. We started the class studying symbolism of all different types including Greek symbolism and religious symbolism and throughout the year while studying Shakespeare and other authors we focused on the symbols used by authors to convey their messages. We were given an interesting assignment, to find as many Greek symbols as we could in magazines, cut them out and make a one page collage. Art was never my thing, but I discovered I was quickly able to find many symbols and my page overflowed. Some of my classmate’s pages were nearly empty and now reflecting back on that some of it was probably due to a bunch of adolescents not finding the time or effort to do the assignment but some of it also had to do with the fact that there are people who just don’t see symbols around them.

The number three, especially in Christianity, is a symbol which carries significance and repeats many times in the gospel and in scripture. I will mention the three that I find most important. There are three members of the Godhead, God the Eternal Father, His Son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost (see Matthew 28:19 and the First Article of Faith). In the resurrection there are three different glories as explained by Paul to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 15:40-42 “one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars”. The fall of Adam and then later the salvation from the fall took place in three gardens, sometimes referred to as the three gardens of the atonement or the three gardens of God and they are the Garden of Eden, the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Garden of the Empty Tomb.

The first of the three gardens was a beautiful garden planted Eastward in Eden. The first garden I planted at my in-laws was defiantly nothing compared to this garden. Many of God’s astonishingly beautiful creations are here for us to see but the Garden of Eden is not here. It is one creation that I imagine more astonishing than any of the natural wonders surrounding us today. Adam and Eve lived there in unashamed innocence, not yet knowing good or evil. They were tempted by Lucifer and Eve was beguiled and partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Beguile is a big word, a word not commonly used today. The beguiling of Eve is a symbol repeated over and over in literature throughout history and is still prevalent today, especially in comedy where the woman falls prey to some plot. Some of that is taken too far to the extreme and woman is made to appear weaker, vulnerable and although it is not a word, I guess you could say beguileable. I have wondered how someone who lived in a perfect garden, someone who walked and talked with God, would have done something God said not to do. I would think that having God tell you something face to face would stick with you for a long time.

I find myself among the crowd of people who believe that Adam and Eve spent a long time in the garden before the fall. This could have been years, decades or centuries because they had bodies that did not yet know corruption or death since it had not yet entered into the world, death being a consequence of the fall. It is certain that Adam and Eve were in the garden long enough for Adam to name all of the animals. Since I don’t even know all the names of the animals I have to believe that it wasn’t just a weekend stay. They were there for a while and it was long enough for Lucifer to come up with a way to trick Eve into eating that fruit. If Genesis it to be believed, it was Lucifer who subtly brought up the topic asking Eve “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”

Eve then replies, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” Lucifer, the serpent, responds with a lie mixed with truth, “Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5)

The lie was telling her that she wouldn’t die; the rest of it was truth and Eve wanted wisdom and she also wanted to be like God, the Father of us all. With Eve’s partaking of the fruit, the fall of mankind began and death and pain entered into the world. With the knowledge of good and evil, Eve, feeling the spiritual pain of guilt for the first time, must have been devastated. Partaking of the fruit was a one way ticket out of the garden. Here again the Biblical record provides little detail as to what happened between the time that Eve partook of the fruit and the time that Adam partook of the fruit. All we know is that there was a time between the time that Eve partook and that Adam partook.

How interesting it would be to know exactly what happened then. One scripture I enjoy applies here, “Adam fell that men might be; and men are that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25). This makes perfect sense thinking that Eve partook first. Adam also needed a one way ticket out of the garden otherwise mankind wouldn’t, as the verse says, ‘be’.

Adam and Eve, evicted from the Eden, moved into a world thousands of years from the events in the two gardens that would be the key to overcoming the two types of death, or separation, that were introduced because of the fall, spiritual death and physical death, the first the separation from God because of sin and the second the separation of the body from the spirit.

This Easter morning I reflect on the events of the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus Christ prayed for all mankind and took upon himself the sins of the world. He prayed just past the third watch. This second garden was not nearly as beautiful as the first; however, the result of what occurred there is more beautiful than anything the eye can see. Spiritual death can be triumphed because of that special part of the atonement.

Christ was then betrayed, tried, and hung on a cross for three hours. During those three hours he re-lived the painful agony of Gethsemane and when it was all done, He, the only one who had power to do so, commended His spirit to the Father on a grey and terrible Friday afternoon.

On Sunday morning, the third day
(Friday = 1, Saturday = 2, Sunday = 3), Christ triumphed over death and walked out of the tomb into the third garden, the Garden of the Empty Tomb. I have spent a lot of time explaining the events in the first garden and not nearly enough time on the second and third gardens. For further reading I will point you to a talk given by Bruce R. McConkie titled “The Purifying Power of Gethsemane”.

Angels heralded the birth of a babe in Bethlehem and an angel announced His triumph over death in a garden with words worthy of a good ponder, He is risen (Mark 16:6). The Master Gardener, cultivator and nurturer of our souls, the one who provides living water so that our souls do not wither and die, triumphed over sin and physical death, the consequences of one garden, in two gardens. Gardening and the number three certainly hold a great deal of significance.