The Gardener
Blog by Kristen Hicks
“Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been laying. ‘Dear woman, why are you crying?’ The angels asked her. ‘Because they have taken away my Lord,’ she replied, ‘and I don’t know where they have put Him.’
She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize Him. ‘Dear woman, why are you crying?’ Jesus asked her. ‘Who are you looking for?’
She thought He was the gardener. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘if you have taken Him away, tell me where you have put Him, and I will go and get Him.’
‘Mary!’ Jesus said.
She turned to Him and cried out, ‘Rabboni!’ (Which is Hebrew for ‘Teacher’)” -John 20:11-16
I have written and rewritten and then rewritten yet again this blog. There is such a beauty to this story. Still, I am having trouble fully being able to explain it—put it into words. But I desire so badly for everyone to understand.
I will never forget Easter of 2017. Ever. I’ve had some pretty spectacular Easters. For me, they always bring something full and new sense of joy. Sometimes, however, they are just strange. One year, I was in San Diego on Easter, and just as we finished up brunch and were settling into the den, there was an earthquake. That was pretty awesome. Then, another year, I was asked to sing “Battle Cry” at the huge church in Alabama, and the Presence was so thick, I felt like I was coming out of my skin. Also, awesome. But still, nothing has topped last year for me. It was simple, seemly uneventful. It was just a moment in my room reading this story with Jesus.
This moment, however, shifted my heart, removed my filters, and has become an overflow into my life over the past year. While reading this story with the Lord, He drew my attention to this one sentence I’ve overlooked my entire life. “She thought He was the gardener.” As I sat there and stared at that line the Holy Spirit started speaking to me. “That wasn’t a mistake that Mary thought He was the gardener. It wasn’t a moment of ‘Oh, silly Mary. Haha.’ There was something about Jesus’ resurrected body that gave Him the appearance of a gardener.”
I love revelations from Jesus. I love how they don’t just bring forth insight and understanding, but they have this rather radical power behind them that not only moves you, it invites you. An invitation that only He Himself can offer and it fell on me in such a way that I just began to cry—tears of joy, tears of hope, tears of just being in awe that He would come to me in such a way and teach me and reveal more of Himself at that moment. That’s just pure sweetness.
I could go into detail about every little bitty thing that He had taught me since then in reference to this subject. But I as I began to try and write all of it out, it just became too much. So I’m going to keep it simple. I hope.
The Lord asked me, one day, as I was reading the story of Adam and Eve, what I thought His original intention was in creating human beings. As I began to sit and think about this question, I came to this conclusion, “Well, You wanted them to just be with You. Do life with You. Be completely dependent upon You.”
“Exactly, My original intention was for man to completely depend on Me for everything and when sin came into the world that didn’t change My intention. So you can filter everything throughout history, everything throughout scripture, through THIS— complete dependency upon Me.” He replied.
At that moment, I didn’t realize how profound this revelation was. But as He has gently and patiently taught me the truth behind it, it has completely wrecked my heart.
If you take that revelation and insert it into this story with Mary seeing Jesus for the first time and mistaking Him for the gardener. You will see that it isn’t a coincidence that that was the appearance that He took on. I have been learning so much about restoration, lately. And the one thing that the Lord has really been having me understand, is that when He restores, He restores to the fullness of Himself. He restores completely, back to His original design—back to His original intention. So it should come as no surprise that His appearance what that of a gardener.
When was thinking about this story this past week, the Lord made something even more clear to me. He said, “If when Jesus resurrected it took Him all the way back to the beginning—to the garden, so it is the same for you. When you die with Christ and are resurrected with Him, you are restored, taken back to the garden, taken back to the beginning, to My original intention and you are able to depend completely upon Me. This is My truest desire for you.”
My prayer is that you allow this revelation to settle within you. That the Holy Spirit fills in all the voids, my lack of words to explain. That He leads to the Truth with this. That He isn’t just a God that saves you from hell. But He is a God that restores you, revives you, redeems you, heals you, and recklessly, unashamedly, faithfully loves you. He loves you out of the completeness of Himself and not out of the emotion of culture. And His desire for you is to take you back to the beginning, before sin ever came into the world, and do life with you, and for you to completely depend on Him. Lean into Him. Allow Him to define you and grow something with you. After all, He is, in fact, the Gardener, and I can’t wait for you to fully find out what that means.