Happy Old Year 2024

Bringing you best wishes for the year ahead and a sweeping view of all that continued growing at Garden in Delight last year! This unique website, bringing you creative and playful ways to grow God’s Word in the garden, breezed through the 10^th year milestone with deep digs into more trees, herbs, and flowers of the Bible all year long. Look back with me at the highlights and circle back to any devotions you may have missed. May you be blessed with inspiring ideas for a new year of gardening!

Through the recent holiday blur of joy and activity, the Lord kept bringing me back to elemental phrases:

So let’s go outside, where Jesus is…Let’s take our place outside with Jesus Hebrews 13:13, 15 The Message

While this Word was spoken with a more specific allusion to the layers of dictated offerings in Tabernacle and Temple practices, I find a measure of giddy simplicity imploring our move to meet Jesus outside…preferably in garden beds and meandering walkways among vivacious displays, can I hear an “Amen?!” I leave you with this desire, even as snow begins to blanket the landscape, to join Him outside normal, religious routines to worship Him in child-like yet meaningful ways.

The grace of Christ is the only good ground for life. Hebrews 13:9 The Message

dwarf pomegranate bushes to remind us what a happy old year 2024 was! — *dwarf pomegranate* *“blessings” that I drive by all the time on my way to Walmart*

We Texans have no snow but a respite of warm December weather. I sensed a prompting to stop for pomegranate snapshots in morning sunshine after reading this by Sarah Young:

The media are increasingly devoted to fear-inducing subject matter…everyday I manifest My grace in countless places and situations, but the media take no notice. I shower not only blessings but also outright miracles on your planet. As you grow closer to Me, I open your eyes to see more and more of My Presences all around you.
From December 28, in Jesus Calling by Sarah Young, ©2013

'gloriosa' lily — *a ‘gloriosa’ lily bloomed exactly on Pentecost, reminding me of Holy Spirit fire in Acts 2*

As gardeners, we are the reporters of the “outright miracles” of flowers that bloom at just the moment we needed encouragement, or the special glisten of frosted lawn that illuminates the morning, and the birdsong that seals all these moments in praise. Garden in Delight is here to help sharpen our spiritual senses, and synchronize with the movements of God happening at ground level.

It always amazes me to look back even over a year’s time to see how much has grown. Despite my technical challenges getting some content to you this year, it’s all here at the Devotions Blog – click the links below to your favorites and find a few new ones.

New Bible Plants: The Bride’s Garden study brought us ways to bring Henna, Myrrh, and Spikenard into our north American gardens; we learned about Biblical and native Mulberry Trees and their mountain-moving allusions; enjoyed the play on Words between casting away cares and Castor Bean; prayed a hedge of protection with Buckthorn plants; listened for the Lord in the breezes of Poplar Trees; and decorated with evergreens like Cilician Fir

Old Favorites: Garden beauties like Lilies, Grapevines, Pomegranates filled The Bride’s Garden; we took a thorough look at Herbs of the Bible (and Spices); made summer fun with Myrtle Gelato; and dug deeper into palm tree horticulture in Palm Branches Praise

Book Review: enjoy a special excerpt about communion from A Table in the Presence by Carey H. Cash

Gardens to Visit: Shields Date Garden, tasty home of date shakes and a marvelous Jesus walk; my annual GardenComm conference yielded marvelous views in Glimpsing Bible Plants in Grand Rapids

Garden Prayer: Garden Refuge for National Day of Prayer and Garden Communion

Garden Moments to Ponder: see how garden work and spiritual life come together in Garden Chores are Metaphors; consider the top 8 references to seeds in the Bible in Seed Story Catalog; with ears to hear, let God call to you in Garden Calling

Lent Series: 2024 brought us the all-out lavish botanicals in King Solomon’s bridal songbook, describing scents and fruits and enthralling garden views, embracing our role as His bride in this special series The Bride’s Garden

New Categories: after 10 years of celebrating the special fall holidays together, I gathered these devotions into handy-to-search categories: Thanksgiving and Isaiah’s Evergreens. Note that Isaiah’s Evergreens are gathered in the Plant Guide, too (where I still need to add Cilician Fir!). Also note the category of Biblical Feasts, branching out to observe Jewish holidays, too

Newsletters: Big move to Substack last spring! Find Garden in Delight News on this growing media platform so that my seasonal chronicle is searchable on the web and open to a new avenue for gathering God-adoring gardeners. Winter News was the last one sent out via MailChimp. Remember links to all past newsletters—and special appearances in colleagues’ publications—are available at www.gardenindelight.com/news/

pomegranate seeds burst from a fruit left on the bush — *a pomegranate left on the bush bursts open to reveal its abundant seeds* – *let them be a sign of the vitality in the new year ahead*!

Devotions Blog in 2025

Enjoy your winter weeks of reorganizing and putting things in order indoors—always my January mantra! These 10 years of writing Devotions Blogs has been fascinating, though I wonder if the Lord might change things up for us in 2025…? Look for news in my Winter Newsletter just after Groundhog Day on Substack, and, as always, I appreciate your prayers for the Lord’s direction and revelation.

Adonai will always guide me. Isaiah 58:11 CJB

Until we meet again, keep connecting the Word to the Land, and savor these Scriptures captured in devotion in 2024. May they ground you in the stunning beauty of Christ as you look forward to the Happy New Year!

To the Lord, our God, belongs the mystery, but these things have been revealed to us and to our children so that we may observe all of the words of this law. Deuteronomy 29:28 NCB

So let us search for him! Let us seek to know the Lord! He will come to our rescue as certainly as the appearance of the dawn, as certainly as the winter rain comes Hosea 6:3 NET

Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates with choice fruits, with henna and nard, nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with every kind of incense tree, with myrrh and aloes and all the finest spices. Song of Songs 4:13-14 NIV

They all realized they were in a place of holy mystery, that God was at work among them. They were quietly worshipful—and then noisily grateful, calling out among themselves, “God is back, looking to the needs of his people!” The news of Jesus spread all through the country. Luke 7:15-17 The Message

“The poor and homeless are desperate for water, their tongues parched and no water to be found. But I’m there to be found, I’m there for them, and I, God of Israel, will not leave them thirsty. I’ll open up rivers for them on the barren hills, spout fountains in the valleys. I’ll turn the baked-clay badlands into a cool pond, the waterless waste into splashing creeks. Isaiah 41:17-18 The Message

Cast your burden on the Lord [release it] and He will sustain and uphold you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken (slip, fall, fail). Psalm 55:22 AMP

God, all at once you turned on a floodlight for me! You are the revelation-light in my darkness and in your brightness I can see the path ahead. Psalm 18:28 TPT

Join us, and pursue a life that creates peace and builds up our brothers and sisters. Romans 14:19 VOICE

*mulberry tree photographed in Slovakia on a mountainside*

Thank you for your love, thank you for your faithfulness; Most holy is your name, most holy is your Word. The moment I called out, you stepped in; you made my life large with strength. Psalm 138:2-3 The Message

THANK YOU for your huge support of My Father is the Gardener this gift-giving season! So many more copies are in the hands of garden readers thanks to your help in spreading the Word!

Enjoy the Garden in Delight Plant Guide to learn more about the plants of the Bible and how to grow them in your garden

Photo Credits: ©2024 Shelley S. Cramm dwarf pomegranate bushes in an Irving, TX parking lot have survived horrible, hot summers and “snowmaggedon” freezes, meanwhile our pampered backyard pomegranate tree died. Such is the mystery of gardening, LOL! Botanical illustration of spikenard, Nardostachys jatamansi by T.F.L. Nees von Esenbeck and M.F. Wijhe (Weyhe), Plantae medicinales, Supplement (1828-1833) Plate 58. From www.plantillustrations.org; Photo 26423553 | Morus Nigra © Jozef Sedmak | Dreamstime.com, Mulberry tree – very old Morus nigra – Slovakia

The Message denotes Scripture quotations taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries.

NIV denotes Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®

TPT denotes Scripture quotations taken from The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017, 2018, 2020 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ThePassionTranslation.com