Jesus declared, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). These words, spoken by the Good Shepherd, resonate across the arc of sacred history — from the creation of the world to the covenants renewed in our day. When God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, He instructed them to “take good care of it, be happy, and find joy therein”. Eden was not merely a pleasant setting; it was a place of divine communion, abundant fruitfulness, and purposeful stewardship.

We now live east of that garden which God Himself had planted. The earth, “cursed for our sake,” yields thorns and thistles as readily as it yields wheat and fruit. Yet the Lord’s invitation to abundant life was not rescinded at the Fall. The question worth pondering is this: can our present, fallen condition — and the very creation we inhabit — become a means of drawing closer to God? Does God not want us to become like Him, the Master Gardener, and bring forth more life? This essay answers ‘Yes’ to both. Cultivating a garden is among the more tangible and transformative ways of drawing closer to God and becoming like Him.

The Meaning of Eden

The word Eden derives from the Hebrew edhen, meaning “pleasure” or “delight.” Its Aramaic cognate evokes something “fruitful and well-watered” — land made sacred through divine cultivation. Eden is therefore not simply a historical location but a layered symbol: of sensory delight, holy presence, and humanity’s deepest longing for a paradise lost and, through covenant, restored.

That symbol is recoverable. Even on this telestial earth, something of Eden can be realized — not by ignoring the fallen world, but by working within it with faith and vision. The soil beneath our feet is not merely dirt. It is a living system that waits, as it were, for stewards willing to tend it with the same care God extended to the original garden.

Our Relationship with Creation in God’s Perfect Plan

The divine command to “be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth” — given first to Adam, repeated to Noah, and woven throughout Latter-day scripture — is not simply a demographic instruction. It is a theological one. Fruitfulness is generative: it requires cultivating conditions in which life can flourish. Multiplication extends that life outward across time and community. And to replenish is to return the earth, insofar as possible, to the fullness and vitality with which it was entrusted to us.

These are not passive obligations. They call us to become, in the Lord’s own phrase, co-laborers in His ongoing creation. The Doctrine and Covenants affirms that “all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and gladden the heart, to strengthen the body and enliven the soul” (D&C 59:18). Creation is not merely a backdrop to human life; it is an active participant in our sanctification.

Stewardship, then, is not simply resource management. It is a spiritual posture — one that requires us to ask not only what the land can produce, but what our relationship with it is producing in us.

Cultivating Prophets

Several notable prophets received their education on the farm. This natural “laboratory of life” helped cultivate understanding of God for spiritual leaders like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Elisha, Amos, Isaiah, Micah, Zechariah, and Joseph Smith. Working in the soil, sweating to eat their daily bread, was both a proving ground and a gateway to higher spirituality. It gave them the metaphors to powerfully teach the gospel. As Ralph Waldo Emerson taught, nature is a pathway to understand the divine. Nature reflects deeper spiritual realities. As Henry David Thoreau experienced, deliberate living in nature clarifies moral and spiritual truth.

Growth, both temporal and spiritual, would not be possible without opposition, pain, and hard work. It would take consistent effort, day by day, to realize the harvest of fruit and life. In that cultivation process, all creation could teach Adam and Eve and their posterity the glories of God, the wonder of His works. (Psalms 19). Each creation, composed of intelligences, would radiate His glory and perfections and serve as a lesson for the observant, sensitive son or daughter of God.

God, The Master Gardener

Christ taught, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” (John 15:1 New International Version) He planted that Garden knowing what each plant needs and knowing how important diversity is in His ecosystem of community. God placed seeds of every kind in the Earth that they may spring forth as all manner of vegetation. Subsequently, He designed and planted The Garden of Eden perfectly by the very definition of who He is. It was as much His own joy as for His own children, for He walked in His garden in “the cool of the day.” He knew the garden would be an essential element of celestial life.

Connectedness and Joy

Physics teaches that a force is a push or a pull. From the subatomic to the galactic, existence is organized by relationships — fields of attraction and repulsion that bind particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, molecules into organisms. Our lives, too, are structured by such relationships: with family, with community, and — less often acknowledged — with the natural world.

Latter-day scripture does not restrict the life of the spirit to exclusively human relationships. Psalm 148 enumerates a vast chorus of creation — sun, moon, stars, fire, hail, mountains, cedars, beasts, and creeping things — all called to praise their Creator. The hymn “All Creatures of Our God and King,” which closes with an address to “Dear Mother Earth who day by day unfoldest blessings on our way,” gives voice to the same understanding. These are not merely poetic flourishes. They suggest that creation has an animate, responsive dimension that the spiritually attuned person can learn to perceive and honor.

Voltaire’s Candide, that deceptively playful masterpiece of the Enlightenment, arrives at a strikingly similar conclusion. After cataloguing every variety of human folly and misfortune, Voltaire’s battered wanderers find their peace not in philosophy or fortune, but in the soil. “We must cultivate our own garden,” Candide concludes — and with that labor comes freedom from idleness, vice, and want. The lesson is older than Voltaire, and deeper than satire: the garden disciplines, sustains, and restores.

The garden is, in this sense, a laboratory of divinity — a place where the character and care of God become legible in living things. The whole earth is fashioned in harmonious interdependence: soil and seed, root and rain, creature and cultivator, each sustaining the others in a system of breathtaking generosity. Alma’s declaration rings with the force of direct experience: “All things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it... do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.” (Alma 30:44). The observant steward does not merely read this testimony — she lives within it.

Let us, then, take good care of this garden — keep it, tend it, dress it — not as mere obligation, but as willing pupils before a patient Teacher. The transcendentalists — Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman — perceived this truth and built their life’s work upon it: that nature is not backdrop but scripture, not scenery but sacrament. To move through the created world with open eyes is to move through a continuous revelation. God is seen in nature. It is the medium through which we come to know Him, His laws, and the proper order of things. The closer we draw to Creation, the closer we draw to our Creator.

Rudolf Steiner, the 19th-century philosopher and educator, proposed that human perception extends well beyond the five commonly named senses to include, among others, a sense of life, of balance, of warmth, and of the presence of other minds. Whether one accepts his framework in its entirety or not, his underlying point is worth sitting with: our capacity for connection with the living world is likely richer than modern life typically allows. Cultivating that capacity — through time in the garden, through attention to the rhythms of the seasons, through the deliberate quieting of the ego — is itself a form of spiritual development.

Brook LeVan, lead farmer at Sustainable Settings in Colorado, puts it plainly:

“Everything is alive. Let the life all around us speak through us, making sure to not let our egos get in the way. As a farmer, I am a steward here to create arenas for all life to do their best work. It’s our job to create unity in sanctified space.” That phrase — sanctified space — deserves reflection. Sacred space is not exclusively found within temple walls. It can be cultivated wherever human hands work the soil in the spirit of covenant stewardship.

Contemporary life is, in many respects, a study in disconnection. We are separated from the cycles of the seasons, from the labor of producing our own food, from the grounding that comes from direct contact with the earth. The consequences — anxiety, depression,

a chronic sense of aimlessness — are well documented in both clinical literature and lived experience. The remedy, it turns out, is also well documented: study after study has confirmed the psychological and physiological benefits of time spent in gardens and in the natural world.

But the gospel of Jesus Christ offers more than therapy. It offers transformation. The Savior’s promise of abundant life was spoken in a world as fallen as our own, to disciples as ordinary as ourselves. That promise is still operative. By tending the earth — by sowing, cultivating, harvesting, and composting — we participate in God’s ongoing work of creation.

Eden is not irretrievably past. It is a vision that calls us forward. Mother Earth, as the hymn suggests, is still unfolding blessings day by day — waiting for stewards willing to receive them, and in receiving, to flourish.

This article was written and submitted by Karl Ebeling, Executive Director at Eden Streets. He can be contacted at: Karl@EdenStreets.org

Bills and Bakes was an in-person and virtual event that recapped environmental bills that were presented during Utah 2026 legislative session while providing yummy treats made by chapter members.

While LDSES does not lobby politically, members may share information about environmental issues, actions, or policies.

Nate Hole, committee member, presented legislation that centered on four themes.

1. Water Rights & Allocations

2. State Jurisdiction over Federal Lands

3. Industry & Environmental Balance

4. Wildfire & Air Quality

We are so grateful to Nate for sharing his interest in policy and the environment with us. And for all other members who provided yummy treats.

For more details about these bills and their impacts, please click on this link.

If you’d like to listen to Nate give his presentation, enjoy below:

In the Global March Newsletter, we had a volunteer from our very own Northern Wasatch Chapter!

"Sometimes you just kind of fall into trying something and discover a whole niche you’d never heard of before. One thing led to another and now I’m a zipper slider expert!

I’m part of a Rotary group, a group that serves locally and internationally. Every year, we gather lost and found items from schools in our district, have the coats washed, and give them to various organizations like the Road Home and the International Rescue Committee.

Some of these coats and jackets are stained, ripped, or broken in some way, but some of them were thrown away only because the zipper wouldn’t zip up. It felt like such a waste to throw away an otherwise perfectly good coat, so I took them home and started researching how to fix them.

I had thought I’d have to rip out all the stitches of the zipper tape and sew in a new one, but found out a lot of times the tape is fine, it’s just the slider that needs replacing, and you can do this for about $2 or less. Imagine getting a new coat for $2! HUGE deal. This is my third year, and I’ve diverted about 200 coats from the landfill to people who need them."

— Chris D.

We love hearing stories and experiences of sustainability and success in stewardship. Feel free to share one with us by emailing us at: northernwasatch@ldsearthstewardship.org

Come join us and enjoy some great treats and conversations!

With the Utah Legislative session wrapping up, join us as we have our very own Northern Wasatch LDSES member, Nate Hole, highlight the pros and cons to some of the most prominent environmental bills of the 2026 session.

We will be In Person AND Virtual (via Zoom). We would love to have you in whatever capacity you are able!

We will be posting the livestream to the LDSES Global YouTube Channel within a few days of the event.

Join us via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85870502179

Address: 782 East 700 South; Clearfield UT 84015

If you have any questions regarding this or any future events, feel free to email us at: northernwasatch@ldsearthstewarship.org

Who: All LDSES members

When: Wednesday, Feb. 25 at 7 PM MT

Where: This is a virtual event. Please register here for the Zoom link (even if you have previously attended book group).

How to Get the Book: This book can be purchased on Thriftbooks, Deseret Book, Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Local Library Access?

• Weber County Library System: Hardback Book, EBook & EAudiobook

• Davis County Library System: Hardback Book, EAudiobook, EBook

And if you missed it, she was a guest on Holy Earth in October 2025 discussing her book. Take a listen/watch on the Holy Earth YouTube channel or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

For future book club reads, join our LDS Earth Stewardship Goodreads Group