I Come to the Garden Alone

There is a hymn that turns 105 this year: “In the Garden,” written in 1913 by C. Austin Miles. We sing it in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sometimes—not as often as I’d like to! :-) It’s now dawning on me that we recorded the song exactly 100 years after its birth, for our 2014 Easter album He is Risen. Every time we get the chance to sing it, it’s the best time ever, for me at least.

We sang it again last Sunday (January 21, 2018) for our “Music & the Spoken Word” broadcast, which is the third-longest-running television show in America, and the longest continuously-running network broadcast in the world. It was born in 1929, just 16 years after “In the Garden” came to be.

As we rehearsed “In the Garden” for our Sunday broadcast, the combined powers of the Choir and the Orchestra at Temple Square produced an intense impact on me. Now, sometimes you hear “intense” and you automatically envision something harsh, like the tanker that blew up into flames that Thursday night on the Salt Lake City freeway whilst we MoTab peeps were snug as bugs in rugs inside the Tabernacle. But mine was a very sweet kind of intense. It was tremendously moving in a good way. But it wasn’t anything new; Ryan Murphy’s arrangement of “In the Garden” gave me the same feeling eons ago, the first time I ever held the sheet music in my hands.

You know how 10 different people can read the same verse of scripture, and that one verse can mean 10 totally different things, from person to person? How 10 different people can look at the same painting, and that painting will tell 10 individual stories, according to viewer? I’ve heard fellow MoTabbers describe what they think of as they’re either playing or singing “In the Garden,” and it’s beautiful to hear their interpretations. I’m uncertain as to whether any of their minds and hearts are transported to the same place mine are. I am taken there instantaneously, right from the starting cue of the conductor.

The trouble, though, is that I’m 100% positive I’m going to find it really, really challenging to put it all into words. But I’m prompted to try. I want to try. Even if it’s only for the solitary purpose of my wishing to revisit it, anytime I determine I’d do well to do so.

Oh gosh, how do I begin? The time, I suppose, is when the Savior, Jesus Christ, was here on the earth, “pleased as man with men to dwell,” in the meridian of time—the period around which the ubiquitously-referenced B.C. and A.D. revolve.

The elements of my would-be explanation (I’m gonna work this out, I am!) upon which I keep stumbling are what my role is in this imaginary “garden” world of mine, and what the garden even is. I know what it is in the third verse. That’s the part that’ll be easiest to explain. But I need to lead you up to that.

Nay, it’s not that I don’t know who I am in my thoughts, nor what the garden is. I know; it’s just that I don’t know how to tell you. Surely there’s no comparison to what 3 Nephi 17:17 discusses, but I’m reminded a little bit of it: “And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak…”

The hymn lyrics begin with:

I come to the garden alone,

While the dew is still on the roses;

And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,

The Son of God discloses.

Followed by the refrain that follows each of the three verses:

And He walks with me

And He talks with me

And He tells me I am His own;

And the joy we share as we tarry there,

None other has ever known.

I picture me entering a place that resembles what I imagine the Garden of Eden looked like. It’s not necessarily the Garden of Eden, but simply a paradise where Jesus lives, and I live, and He’s a best friend of mine, and I’m a best friend of His, and from time to time we enjoy going on walks together to talk about life, and He helps me figure things out, like how to become a better disciple and how to trust and take comfort in Heavenly Father’s plan.

The paradise, like a holographic Pokémon trading card, shifts appearances as I mentally take a small step aside. I find myself living where Christ actually lived when He was here. Israel. I’m there with Him, or observing Him, for seemingly every step of His life. It’s like I was there on that night in Bethlehem. It’s like I was among the company of doctors who listened to, learned of, and carried remarkably mature conversation in the temple with a boy who was but 12 years old, who possessed astounding wisdom and sobriety, light-years beyond his years.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice

Is so sweet, the birds stop their singing;

And the melody that He gave to me

Within my heart is ringing.

Still carefully watching Him as He continues to grow up—a truly spiritual giant of a person, living a spotless and sinless life, ceaselessly lifting others, enriching His community with light and goodness everywhere He goes, setting the most amazing example I had ever seen from anyone.

I’m there listening to His wonderful, poignant sermons. The Beatitudes. The parables. Witnessing Him perform numerous mighty miracles, all of which are born out of love and because of faith. Everything He says and does leaves me standing in awe. It all resounds in my heart. Within my heart, it’s ringing.

Facing the holograph once more, I return to where I was originally standing and I’m swiftly back in the gorgeous garden. I’m walking with Him again. I love this. I never want our walking days to come to an end…

I’d stay in the garden with Him

Tho’ the night around me be falling;

But He bids me go; thro’ the voice of woe,

His voice to me is calling.

The sun had been gloriously beaming all about, from one end of the sky to the other. The wind was calm, and the air pleasantly warm. But what were these dark clouds heading our way with the speed of a falcon? What was this storm materializing out of nowhere? What… What is this?

Fear immediately fills me, and I can’t define what’s flooding through my mind as I’m staring at His face. At what’s happening to Him. A strange and inevitable unseen connection seems to exist between Him and this violent, cold, ominous tempest, as though its destiny was to find Him, or His purpose all along was to ultimately confront it.

My instinct is to stay with Him and help Him see this through. But He bids me go, for this is something He must face alone. I obey, and as I walk away with my brow still furrowed, still intermittently glancing back at Him, His eyes suddenly meet mine across the distance. He calls out to me through His struggling voice of woe. I listen carefully…

I’ll walk with you.

I’ll talk with you.

You are my own.

And then the totality of my worry dissolves. Somehow. Somehow I know this is not the end. This isn’t the end of the walks we’ve always loved so much to take. Because of all He has done: because of His selfless sacrifice—both on the cross and in the garden—because He rose again on the third day, and because He still shows me the way even when I currently cannot see Him with my physical eyes, there will come the day when I will see Him again, and He and I can walk and talk side-by-side once more.

In fact, He walks and talks with me now, in the meantime. He is alive, He is active. He is interested and involved. He is incapable of forgetting me—whether intentionally or unintentionally—because He is perfect with a perfect charity. I still go on my daily walks, but I know I never walk alone. Because He doesn’t leave me alone. I am His own.