WHAT STARED BACK
A tool can serve the soil, but it should never own the garden.
This is Mr. Basil. He lived in our garden the summer I was learning how to stand again. He grew to nearly four inches, and he ruled that bed like he owned it. Most days, you would walk right past him. He preferred it that way. But if Marty was with me, she had an eagle eye for him. She could spot him in all that green, and when she did, she would light up like a little kid — then turn to me and ask, “Do you have your camera?”
I thought I was the one looking.
A camera, a shovel, and a question my wife had never asked me before.
Seventeen years between the first photograph and the thought that finally caught up with it.
DEDICATION
To the Holy Spirit — for guiding me into the deeper places of thought, memory, and reflection. For helping me explore what I am carrying, uncover what needs to be seen, discover the wisdom God is revealing, and recognize the truths He wants me to understand at this stage of life.
To Marty — for always being in the garden with me. For turning the soil with me, smelling the roses with me, slowing down with me, and helping me stay present in our marriage and our life. You are more than beside me. You are yoked with me. Wherever we stand, the garden becomes sanctuary because we are standing there together under God.
To the reader — for sitting with these stories, bringing your own life into the reflection, and allowing God to speak where something needed to be heard. My prayer is that these words do more than inspire thought. I pray they open a quiet place where the Holy Spirit can reveal what matters, what needs tending, and what belongs back in the shed.
SCRIPTURE
“Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” — Genesis 2:15 (NKJV)
“So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.” — Psalm 90:12 (NKJV)
“Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.” — Proverbs 4:23 (NKJV)
THE HOOK
In 2009, I walked out into the garden with my camera in hand.
Marty and I had already done the trimming and pruning for the day. The work was behind us. We were just standing in it, letting it be what it was — full, green, reaching for the light.
I had come out looking for a picture.
I was carrying a lot more than a camera.
THE STORY
I was still rebuilding after severe West Nile. I had survived something I should not have survived. By every measure I had been given, I was one of the few who made it through. My body was weak, my future uncertain, my pace nothing like it used to be. I was learning how to stand again, work again, breathe again — and notice what I had almost missed.
Then I saw him.
Mr. Basil — the praying mantis — out on the green stems, still and hidden, the king of the garden in my mind. He blended in so completely that he all but disappeared into the leaves.
But if you slowed down, there he was. Watching. Waiting. Completely at home — with no concern for anything I was carrying in my mind.
THE MOMENT
That is what stopped me.
A small living thing, tucked into the leaves, fully present. No hurry. No fear of tomorrow. No need to control what was coming next. And me, standing over him with a camera, thinking about everything — where I had been, where I was, where it was headed.
I thought I was looking into the garden.
It felt like the garden was looking back.
That is the strange thing about a long gaze. The eyes go still, but the mind keeps running — a hundred miles an hour, chasing something it cannot name. The eyes are only trying to catch up to the thought.
Sometimes what stares back at you is your own thinking.
And sometimes, if you hold still long enough, it is something far larger — watching, waiting, holding the gaze until you finally hold still too.
At the time, I was running two businesses. One lived in the world of hazardous compliance — liability, pressure, responsibility, consequence. The other lived close to my natural wiring — IT, computers, systems, tools, the edge of whatever was coming next.
I was standing between soil and systems. Between a garden and a future. Between what God grows slowly and what man keeps trying to make faster.
Seventeen years later, I am standing in that same garden bed.
Still with a camera in my hand. Still looking for a shot. Still wondering where it is all headed.
THE TURN
Only now I am sixty-seven.
There are days I can hardly pick up a shovel anymore, but I can still pick up my camera.
Time changes what you can carry. It also reveals what you were never meant to carry in the first place. In 2009 I thought so much of life was about what had to be done now — the next job, the next problem, the next decision that could not wait. I was working so hard I nearly missed the garden I was standing in.
This time, I was not working. I was just there. Enjoying it. Listening to it. Letting it speak.
And it asked me a different question than it had asked the younger man with the camera.
How much of what consumed me was ever as important as it felt at the time?
The garden does not only grow fruit.
It grows the gardener.
I have changed in the years between that first photograph and the man now standing in the same soil. I take longer now — to think, to answer, to move. I am no longer willing to hand over a response I have not weighed. I check it against my emotions, hold it against what is true, and make sure I am standing in my own identity before I let it go.
The younger man answered fast. This one would rather answer right.
Not long ago, Marty asked me what I thought about AI. She had never asked me that before. So we sat down and talked — not for five minutes, but for the better part of two hours. And underneath her question I could hear what so many people are carrying right now: concern and wonder, opportunity and suspicion, fear and amazement, all at once.
Some are terrified of it. Some are nearly worshiping it. Most do not realize how long they have already been living with smaller versions of it.
The noise around it is loud. Fear is loud. Promises are loud.
And in the middle of all that noise, I found myself back in the garden, assessing the soil.
It is a tool. That is where I land first — not the gardener, the seed, the soil, the rain, or God. A tool. And every tool must stay in its proper place.
THE DRIFT
A tool is neutral, they say. It only does what you tell it. Set your boundaries and you will be fine.
A shovel opens soil or it damages roots. A car carries a family home or becomes a weapon in the hands of rage. A hammer frames a house or harms a life. The tool is innocent. The hand decides.
So set the boundary, keep the tool in its lane, and the garden takes care of itself.
But I have held tools my whole life, and I have learned that a boundary only tells me where a tool belongs. It never tells me whether it belongs in my hand at all — or what it is quietly doing to the hand that keeps reaching for it.
THE REFLECTION
Not everything dangerous is evil by design. Some things are dangerous because they are misused. Some are dangerous because they are doing exactly what they were built to do. Knowing the difference is the whole work of discernment.
So I have learned to hold three things together. A boundary tells me where a tool belongs. Discernment tells me whether it belongs in my hand at all. Wisdom teaches me when to use it, how to use it, and when to put it away.
God did not place man in the garden so the tool could rule the garden. He placed him there to tend and keep it. Stewardship came before production. The garden was never only about what could be harvested — it was about what was being formed in the one who tended it.
That is what I do not want to lose. A tool can help me work the soil, but it cannot do the surrender for me. It cannot pray in my place. It cannot abide for me, repent for me, or carry my cross. Some things were never meant to be automated, because they are the very things forming us while we do them. Pruning forms us. Waiting forms us. Struggle forms us.
I can get a tool to hand me perfect words. But perfect words without a surrendered heart are still artificial.
So I have stopped asking only whether a tool can do the work. The better question is whether it should — and beneath that, the one that keeps pressing on me: what fruit is it producing? Is it making me more truthful, more patient, more surrendered, more aware of God? Or just faster, louder, and more impressed with myself?
The danger was never the intelligence. The danger is intelligence without wisdom, power without surrender, progress without love.
So before I ask what a tool can do, I have to ask who is governing the one using it.
A keyboard still has a heart behind it. A screen still has a soul sitting in front of it. If that heart is not surrendered to Christ, something else will always look for the opening. The enemy does not need to own the tool. He only needs an unsurrendered hand willing to use it.
If Jesus is not in it, then who is?
WALKAWAY LINE
The garden was never meant to be ruled by what we built for the shed.
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT
What tool in your life has started helping so much that it is quietly asking to lead?
MY PRAYER
Heavenly Father,
Teach me to use what You place in my hands without surrendering my heart to it. Give me wisdom to know the difference, discernment to see the fruit, and the courage to put a thing back in the shed when it starts reaching for the lead.
Do not let what I build become greater than the One who made me.
Keep every tool in my hand — and my hand itself — surrendered under Christ.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
ABOUT G~
G~ writes from lived experience — exploring identity, authority, and time through the lens of faith, trial, leadership, and surrender. His reflections are not meant to condemn or hype, but to steady. Rooted in covenant, forged through adversity, and anchored under the authority of Jesus Christ, his work invites readers to examine who governs their lives — and to live intentionally under truth.
If what you’ve read resonates with your journey, feel free to reach out.
G~
I pray that it has something to think about for him. Thank You..
So true, Bryan. Well said.
I think of all the things we fear until we finally take the time to understand them. Then I think of all the things that harmed us because we refused to sit at the table long enough to understand.
Man and God cannot be replaced.
Only denied.
Only misunderstood.
G~