“I come to the garden alone, when the dew is still on the roses…”
My Aunt Doll (her real name was Myrtis, but no one called her that) was my grandfather’s sister and lived in a house that had been my great-grandparents’, on a short street in a sleepy little Mississippi town. In one corner of the dark living room, she had a small, 1970s Magnus keyboard—the ones with buttons for chords to the left side—and I remember playing the hymn with this opening verse from one of her music books, befuddled, as a young child, why anyone would go to a garden in the pre-dawn wetness.
Well, I get it now and I spend the early morning tending the plantings on the east side of the rectory, before the summer sun begins its steady broil on that side of the house. I also now understand the desire for intimacy with Jesus expressed in the lyrics of the song.
For many of us, time changes during these summer months, and it is my prayer that each has had some time to speak with Jesus as well, whether in an early morning garden, in a mountain hike, beside a pool, even in a car shuttling young ones from one place to the next, or in the quiet of a house after the activity of a day has ceased. If you’re like me, though, we must be intentional about those conversations, because life gets full fast, and the treasure of spiritual space is a rare commodity. But we have all the power in the world to change that, and Jesus, as the speaker shares in Charles Miles’s text, walks with us, and talks with us, and tells us we are his own. Some days, friends, I need to hear this from a loudspeaker—or, better yet, in the quiet of my early morning garden, while the dew is still on the roses.
Blessings, friends, in this mid-summer. May your conversations with Jesus, our dearest companion, fill you with peace.
Burl+
The Rev'd. Burl Salmon
Rector
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