Review: NIV God's Word for Gardeners Bible Grow Your Faith While Growing Your Garden By Contributor: Shelley Cramm

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 5373 KB
• Print Length: 1568 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Up to 5 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
• Publisher: Zondervan; Special edition (March 25 2014)
• Sold by: Zondervan CA (CA SOR)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00J1UJ8O4

Book Description

God will meet you personally in your garden... and in his. Throughout the Scriptures God has revealed spiritual truth in the language of growing things. This Bible will take you into a deeper relationship with God through the contemplation of soil and soul. The NIV God’s Word for Gardeners Bible will inspire you to seek God in a personal way through informative essays, devotional readings and prayers that explore the nature of the gardener’s work, the rewards of gardening, the influence of seasons and weather, and the joy of the harvest. In this Bible you will also find botanical-themed pages containing horticultural information for the prominent plants noted in Scripture and landscape-themed pages highlighting the main gardens and regions in which the events in the Bible took place. Draw near to the One whose garden is planted with delight---in you!

Features: * 260 daily devotions and 52 weekend readings arranged in weekly themes and placed near relevant passages in the text to explore the biblical metaphors of gardens and gardening * Beautiful, durable hardcover * Topical Index (for 52 weeks) * Special sections on the Garden of Eden, the garden of Gethsemane and Jesus the Vine.

About the Author
 

Shelley S. Cramm, author of NIV God’s Word for Gardeners Bible, is a suburban mom who has found the Word of God to be completely useful and practical in her everyday life—not to mention delightfully fun! Her background includes work in architectural and garden design, as well as involvement in local Bible study groups, Moms in Prayer and Moms of Preschoolers ministries.

Inspiration to write a gardener’s Bible grew out of a routine of morning journaling and an enduring hope to finish up the laundry and get out to the garden. Shelley and her husband Topher have five children and live in Irving, Texas.

http://www.gardenindelight.com/blog/

Shelley S. Cramm, author of NIV God’s Word for Gardeners Bible, is a suburban mom who has found the Word of God to be completely useful and practical in her everyday life—not to mention delightfully fun! Her background includes work in architectural and garden design, as well as involvement in local Bible study groups, Moms in Prayer and Moms of Preschoolers ministries.
Inspiration to write a gardener’s Bible grew out of a routine of morning journaling and an enduring hope to finish up the laundry and get out to the garden. Shelley and her husband Topher have five children and live in Irving, Texas.
- See more at: http://www.gardenindelight.com/about/#sthash.LHMBDoGv.dpuf

Shelley S. Cramm, author of NIV God’s Word for Gardeners Bible, is a suburban mom who has found the Word of God to be completely useful and practical in her everyday life—not to mention delightfully fun! Her background includes work in architectural and garden design, as well as involvement in local Bible study groups, Moms in Prayer and Moms of Preschoolers ministries.
Inspiration to write a gardener’s Bible grew out of a routine of morning journaling and an enduring hope to finish up the laundry and get out to the garden. Shelley and her husband Topher have five children and live in Irving, Texas.
- See more at: http://www.gardenindelight.com/about/#sthash.LHMBDoGv.dpuf

My Review

This is a very interesting format for a bible. I am reviewing the ebook of this bible and I have found it very easy to navigate with the included hyperlinks. It is a unique bible in that it is a bible for people who love to garden and love nature.

This is an introduction to the unique format:

Welcome to God’s Word for Gardeners. We will be puttering together for 52 weeks, gathering information and insight from the Bible’s plants, landscapes, and common cultivating practices into gentle, prayerful daily musings on God’s Word. A hybrid of study Bible and devotional Bible, with an understory planting of quotations from garden writing classics, God’s Word for Gardeners will connect you to all that God intended in our working the land and taking care of it.

Because a garden is a place we go to, to rest and reconnect, to find our way, to breathe the earth; many of our weeks will be spent seeing the landscape places of the Bible, a Garden Tour, so to speak, inspiring us with ideas to try at home . . .

and a garden is a work we do, growing ourselves as we grow our plants — a work in progress, a work of the heart; there is always work to do! God teaches us his ways through the weeks of Garden Work . . .

and a garden is a story. Beginning-middle-end parallels the seed to sprout to flower and fruit — walk with a gardener in his garden and you will hear stories and histories of plants, storms, survival, and surprise, all very personal and endearing. God has so much to impart in his Garden Stories.

Like a cucumber crisp from the vine or dewdrops on needle-tips catching the light, you have not tasted and seen the full goodness of the Lord until you have considered his Word from a gardener’s point of view. The whole Bible is meant to be known with book in one hand, trowel in the other. More than a metaphor, gardening unlocks insight, explanation, practicality and company with God in grasping and delighting in the Word of God. 

RSVP to the garden’s invitation: Come!

Weekly themes include:

GARDEN TOUR: Garden of Eden, Fertile Crescent, Egypt, Sinai Desert, Promised Land, En Gedi, Cedars of Lebanon, Palace Gardens, Mount of Olives, Asia Minor and Macedonia, Revelation’s Urban Garden

GARDEN WORK: Choosing, Preparing the Soil, Planting, Planting Pots, Watering, Cultivating, Weeding, Pruning, Propagating, Composting; Sowing and Reaping, Rooting, Growing, Flowering, Bearing Fruit, Celebrating the Harvest; with age-old spiritual disciplines as Garden Tools — Prayer, Work Ethic, Humility, Thanksgiving, Hope, Peace, Generosity

GARDEN STORIES: Seasons, Sun and Shade, Weather, Pest and Pestilence — because calamities eventually make the best stories; Jesus’ Horticultural Parables, Israel’s Horticultural Allegories, Away from the Last Supper, Jesus, the Seed, Root, Branch and Firstfruit, The Harvest of Righteousness, Intimacy with God in the Garden

 I had not thought of God as a gardener before. What an interesting concept. God's Word for Gardeners has a weekly reading plan that includes readings, devotions and a prayer for each day. As a gardener I find this bible to be very uplifting and helpful. The devotions are thoughtful and encouraging. The information about plants in the bible is fascinating.

I had wondered how author Shelley Cramm would handle my favorite verse in the bible, Isaiah 58:11. She wrote:

With the words of Isaiah, God reminds us of his continual, enduring way of meeting our needs and using us to meet the needs of others (Isaiah 58:10 – 11). It is the moving current of his two commandments: with God as the source, loving him flows into loving others (Mark 12:29 – 31). As we help friends or strangers, the Lord reassures us in the beautiful language of the garden that he will guide us, satisfy our needs and keep us strong in doing so (Isaiah 58:11). He brings us from sun-scorched land, so to speak, to well-watered gardens, refreshed so we will refresh others.

Gardener and author Rebecca Cole reminds us of the personal nature of tending the garden through the chore of watering.

 To summarize, gardening makes me happy and worshiping the Lord makes me happy. The two of these things combined is a winner as far as I am concerned. A great addition to my bible collection.