Things are turning green around here. In spite of the best efforts of wind and storm, trees are leafing out, shrubs are showing color, and the season is shifting. While I honestly prefer summer, it seems that spring is growing on me (pun very much intended).

As mild as our winter has been, I really don't remember ever being so anxious for the arrival of signs of new life and continued growth. I suppose it stems from becoming more and more aware of the creative (and very green) core of faith.

The first Biblical passages are dedicated to painting a picture of God the creator. Desire, and breath, and spoken word bring forth a cosmos of light and dark, water and sky and land, plants and animals of all sorts, and human beings. Humanity's first home is a garden, and humanity's first calling is to tend that garden - which any gardener knows is creative work.

I'm not naïve, of course: people of faith have often taken an anything but creative, tend-the-garden approach to the world. How so many came to the conclusion that it's our job to divide it up, dig it up and use it up is beyond me. The only thing tended by such an approach is greed - the desire for control (a decidedly un-godlike desire). The result is consumption not creation.

It doesn't have to be that way. We don't have to be that way.

It's a good time of year to be thinking about doing a better job of tending the gardens in our care. That, of course, isn't just the little plots we plant with flowers and vegetables, but also the green spaces in our community, at the places we work - and the whole world. There's lots of room for real creativity.

At Pointe of Grace we're working at it a couple of ways. First, there's the community garden. There are fruit bearing trees and shrubs, and raised beds which will grow vegetables, all to be shared with local food banks and feeding programs. We're also growing flowers for those in long-term care facilities. And we've built a bed just to help the children of our preschool learn about plants - and generosity.

Second, we've been working at restoring native growth protection areas around our church campus. The work will help protect wetlands and down stream habitat for plants, animals, and fish. It will also reduce our water consumption. On top of all of that we see it as a model project for the use of  native growth plants in ornamental landscaping. Simply put, we're working for faithful, functional, and attractive.

Any one interested is welcome to join in the process - we've already engaged a variety of community groups. But maybe you'll just read this and think about your own gardens, and the creative possibilities that are all around you. That would be great, too. There's no better time, it is after all and at last, spring. God made you a partner in creation, a tender of gardens. Things around here are turning green – maybe you should, too.

Pointe of Grace's community garden is located at the church, 5425 Harbour Pointe Blvd