Garden Saints

I don’t know what sparked my mischievous mind the first time, but there was only one answer when my grandmother asked if I’d put mud on the head of her garden saint.

The damp potting soil fit the curvature of my chubby hand, and it sat delightfully atop the head of the stone saint, arms held open, opulent robe impervious to wrinkle or stain. I remember thinking that the dark brown of the mud looked a little like Robin Hood’s merry cap and that it adorned the saint rather well. 

My grandmother tried not to be amused. She hastily swept the mud toupee off the garden saint and pursed her lips on the side of her face as she wiped him clean again.

Her hands were muddy now, like mine. She had potting soil across her apron and on her knees. 

“Why is he a saint?” I wanted to know.

“Because he was good,” she answered, with a sideways glance at me. 

I looked into the serene stone face that never altered. 

“What is his name?” I asked. 

“Joseph,” she said, without hesitation. 

“Why is he in the garden?” I asked. 

“To keep the snakes away.”

I studied his arms again, open yet unmoving. If I were a snake, I wouldn’t be afraid of him at all, I knew. 

The alligators weren’t afraid of him either, apparently, since they slithered right past him to slip into the swimming pool. 

Whenever her back was turned, I would find a little mud to give the garden saint his only ornament of humanity. He seemed happier when he admitted his frailty.  

No real saint is made of stone. 

Every follower of Christ is a flesh and blood saint, and we all have mud on our heads. 

From the moment the Creator scooped the first handful of earth to craft Adam’s form, we have been intimately connected to this earth in a way we can’t shake. We’re at the mercy of air and water, death and fire, hunger and frailty. 

And God knew it. 

He knew that one day, He would empty Himself of His deity and take on the form, not of some ineffectual stone statue, but of a frail human being with mud on His head, in order to redeem us. Instead of men of dust, we have the choice to become like Him, men of heaven.

I met a woman coming out of the post office. She recently has suffered more than any other person I know through personal loss. She wept as she told me that she had slipped back into addiction. The shame of the mud on her head was more than she could bear. 

Jesus was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He knows that we are all just garden saints, tempted to eat the fruit yet clinging to the promise that He rescues us from every temptation. We cling to our own foolish efforts to be good, though they rise from hearts of stone, instead of turning to Him in our flesh to ask for hearts made real, made to beat in rhythm with His.

“Oh, guard my soul, and deliver me! Let me not be put to shame, for I take refuge in You!” the Psalmist wrote. 

He takes His very human hands and wipes our heads and faces clean, taking the mud onto Himself, but also banishing every thought and temptation from the serpent so that we can more effectually serve Him, garden saints indeed.