Tomorrow he would hang for love alone, to become the bridge of light and life between God and mankind. To cancel sin’s power over you and me. But Jesus, hours before his crucifixion, prayed in a garden.

Please don’t picture a neatly groomed, long-haired man sitting on a large rock surrounded by flowers. Gazing serenely skyward, moonlight caressing his face. Picture a disheveled, frightened man. Prostrate. Arms outstretched, face pressed into black earth. Hear guttural moans. Picture burst capillaries. Blood drops watering the soil.

Picture him alone.

Jesus prayed in a garden. Ever wonder why?

“How’re ya doin’ for vegetables?” a friend asked recently, then followed that up with a gift—beautiful, bright, wintered-over produce—and just when our fridge drawer needed filling.

We’ve gardened a few times, the Preacher and I. Never well—not compared to our gardener friends. We’ll try again this year.

It’ll be our first summer in the middle-aged bungalow we call Hope House. It sits on about a quarter-acre of trees and black earth. Edna, the plucky octogenarian who owned the place before us, farmed most of her life. And until a few years before she died, she gardened almost the entire backyard.

(We’ll not try that.)

Regular old dirt astonishes me. Black soil is earth’s largest—and most maligned—womb, impeccably suited for its God-designed purpose—to produce enough food and beauty to sustain all creation.

I can’t wait to see what God will do with our little plot of dirt when we mix it with a little sweat. We hope for tulips in spring (already planted), lettuce, peas and raspberries (already well established, and needing taming) in the summer. For root fruits in autumn.

From our friends’ gift bags, I dug out treasures. Russet potatoes, washed clean of soil-freckles. Paper-white onions, candy-sweet. Carrots, orange as a prairie sunset, tidily sliced from their unruly tops. I picked one and started crunching—then recalled: company’s coming!

The Preacher grabbed a handful of carrots and wandered away, happy. “Think I’ll make a pot of soup,” I called after him. Go for it, he shot over his shoulder.

Preparing vegetables by hand centers me. I enjoy the rhythm of carrots sliding up and down our ancient steel grater. Weeping over bleeding onions leaves scant headspace for random thoughts, and carving potatoes into dice-sized cubes satisfies me almost as much as unearthing a very good verb.

What comes next is even better. The fragrance of a simmering winter soup pot. Succulent shattered vegetables, slipping down hungry throats. Only this time, rather than drawing nutrients from the surrounding dark, they provide nourishment to build and sustain both cells and body.

And so goes the cycle. From blackness emerges brightness, which—bruised, broken, and immersed once more in darkness, provides life—even while dying.

Jesus prayed in a garden. Perhaps, in his humanness, he needed the reminder of his Father’s plan—to bring dazzling life from his blackest dark.  Eternal sustenance for those who taste.

Please help yourself.