I started a master’s program this week. I am studying religion with an emphasis in Biblical studies at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. This is something I have wanted to pursue for about 14 years, but never had the courage to apply, until this past spring. There is something transformative that happens to you when you surround yourself with people who really believe in the value that you bring. I’m thankful for the friends who encouraged me explicitly and implicitly to pursue this. Below is one of the essays I wrote as part of my application.

When I think about who God is, there is ultimately one word that comes to mind: love. Love, and God, manifests in many forms, but each way can be stripped back to this basic idea.

               God loves people. From the very beginnings of the story of our faith, we see God loving and caring for people. Genesis tells us that God did not want Adam to be alone, and so God created Eve. When God calls Abram out of Ur to go to a new land, God does not put conditions on the promises, saying “I’ll give you this land if…” God hears Hagar crying out in despair and meets her in her pain. God rescues the Israelites from slavery and protects them on their journey through the wilderness. God continually forgives when the Israelites repent of their idolatry. God even entered the human story as a human, to walk beside us and show us—personally—the ways of righteousness.

               Jesus shows us great love in the way he welcomed and cared for the afflicted, the oppressed, those who were ridiculed or dismissed by society, and those who were seen as outside of the Jewish society. When Jesus talks of his father in heaven, we see the picture of a just God, one who loves and accepts, who calls for humility and offers grace. Jesus loved his friends, surely, but also his enemies, healing the ear of one of the soldiers sent to arrest him, and praying for the crowd as he was dying.

               God loves the earth. Scripture tells us that what God created was good. It reminds us that God cares for the sparrows just as he does for us. It teaches us the earth will praise God—yes, even the rocks will cry out—and that the trees of the field with clap their hands in joy. God cared for the animals that the Israelites used as sacrifices, by commanding merciful treatment of them through Levitical law. God created a richly beauteous world that is full of wonder. The very complexity of interconnectedness of the natural world signals to me that God loves the earth enough to spend the care it takes to put such a complex system into motion.

               When I think about the ways in which God loves, I also feel the amazing power God has to transform. God is always transforming me—sometimes through pruning, and sometimes through letting me grow. Just as a gardener will dead head the rose bushes, so the flowers will keep growing, so God clips away all the unhealthy parts of me. God is a caretaker, and caretaking is at its very heart, a kind of love. It is the kind of love that wants to see a flourishing, but it is also a sacrificial kind of love. As the caretaker of my garden, I want to see my plants thrive. I take time to make sure that happens, watering them, pruning them, giving them extra fertilizer when they need it, pulling out the weeds that could choke them out. In the same way, as a caretake for my children, I put in the effort it takes to have them grow into responsible, kind, loving and self-aware adults. This takes time, patience, effort—sometimes it even takes tears. This is how I imagine God, constantly working on me, constantly beside me, guiding me, leading me, teaching me.

               Jesus’s parables are full of the imagery of the garden and the farm. There are cultural reasons why he would have chosen these metaphors, but I think the genius of Jesus’ teachings is that they transcend their own time period, calling us to think about one of our most basic needs. Humans will always have a need to grow food, whether we do it industrially or individually. Jesus used imagery of the earth and how to care for it in his teachings on how God cares for us, and to show us how to live life to the fullest. This underscores the importance of God’s love for the earth at the same time it shows us God’s love for people. Pastoralists and practitioners of early agriculture would have known that to care for the farm or the garden was critical to survival. Jesus using this imagery shows how critical God’s love and care is for our own spiritual health and survival. Without it, we would surely wither, just as the vine does without proper care.

               Finally, God loves me. Yes, even me. Though I might not feel like it at all times, God continually loves me. God loves me enough to open doors for me. God loves me enough to push to me to grow. God loves me enough to send me comfort when I am hurting. God loves me enough to give me opportunities to flourish and to use the gifts I have been given. God loves me enough to reveal Godself to me continuously, through my mentorships and friendships. God has loved me when I am at my worst, and God has loved me when I am at my best, and I know God will always do this. God is, ultimately, the best gardener and caretaker I know.