This year, I’m gardening. When I close my laptop, leave my phone behind, and pour water into terra-cotta pots, I slow down enough to remember who God made me to be, despite living in a digital era.
Most technology is rushing toward immortality in an effort to save time, trying to transcend human limits—the greatest of which is death. Alas, in grasping for life, I forget to live. Gardening, on the other hand, shows me the brevity of my life and teaches me to hold it dear.
Using Technology and Living Forever
Generative artificial intelligence tools like Copilot, Claude Code, Canva, and ChatGPT teach me to hurry. Even if I don’t use these tools much, others who use them are raising their standards for productivity and efficiency—for how they expect me to grip and turn the hourglass of my life.
Taken to the extreme, technology allows me to outsource my working, playing, resting, and thinking so I have freedom to do whatever I want. When I use a dishwasher, car, laptop, or AI tool, I’m trying to manage, save, gather, and store the sands of time—as if they were mine to control. I so easily become a manager of machines. I so easily forget to cherish my humanity.
Alas, in grasping for life, I forget to live.
When I use any tool to boost my productivity, I tell myself there’s something more important than whatever occupies me now—if only I could get to it. Sometimes that’s good. I’m thankful I can drive to the store instead of walking. Praise God for dishwashers. But what about the bulk of my thinking, my resting, my playing, my working: the rich and beautiful tasks God has given me for my short time on earth? What am I saving time for?
If I have no good answer, I’ve lost sight of who God made me to be and why I use technology at all.
Gardening and Dying
Gardening tells an opposite story. In the pots on my balcony, life and death hurtle by in only a few months. Time blows through my herbs. Tomatoes grow, fall off the plant, and rot. Roots stretch beneath the dirt. My plants grow up and grow old, and the distance between the two is “razor thin,” as the latest edition of Every Moment Holy says.
It’s no coincidence that Jesus prays in a garden—full of living and dying organisms—right before his death. Surrounded by a creation that’s groaning, longing to be set free from its bondage to futility (Rom. 8:20), Christ groans with it. He finally says, “It is enough; the hour has come” (Mark 14:41). Perhaps this garden is part of Christ learning obedience (Heb. 5:8). Perhaps the dying trees give him courage not to innovate out of death. Perhaps their discomfort helps him sit in his.
At least that’s true for me. When I watch a plant shiver in the wind and bend under the watering can, I know time isn’t mine. It’s God’s. No matter what I do, I cannot change the number of days God has given me on this earth. I can’t save time; I can’t spend time. What I can do is live within it, anticipating the day when Jesus will return and set us free from its countdown of decay.
As I write these words, Microsoft Word repeatedly prompts me to “rewrite this paragraph with Copilot.” But this writing is the task God has given me today. It’s my work; it’s human work. This is not the place to save time.
Gardening teaches me who I am and what work God made me to do. Like a head of lettuce, I’ve rapidly grown from a weak seedling into a sturdy, self-sustaining being. And soon, I’ll become papery remains that dissolve into soil: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19). I’m going to die. I know that implicitly when I look at the plants on my apartment’s balcony. They are and will always be on a precipice next to the valley of the shadow of death, on their way to tumbling down. So am I.
I realize my death is coming. I want to be a liver of life.
Numbering Our Days
Thank God, death so often leads back into life. As the apostle Paul writes, “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies” (1 Cor. 15:36). The seed buried beneath the dirt becomes a fluffy bush of basil or lettuce that feeds me. When that plant dies, it becomes compost that feeds new seeds.
Jesus’s friends bury him in a garden (John 19:41), allowing the husk of his body to germinate in a tomb. Little do they know they’re planting a seed that will put Jack’s beanstalk utterly to shame! Christ trades his death for the lives of all who love him: We carry “in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:10; see Col. 3:3–4).
I can’t save time; I can’t spend time. What I can do is live within it.
Gardening gives me courage to live like a human. Surrounded by death, I don’t have to distract myself or automate my living. I certainly don’t have to treat myself like a machine. As I pull weeds, I find the courage to follow Christ, who “has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20).
What is my life? A seed with the promise of resurrection. Bury me, and I’ll come back better: Gardening tells me this.
With the psalmist and the back-porch gardener, I say, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). Thank God for tools—but I’ll be gardening on the porch.
The Gospel Coalition