Gardening was the first job given to humans. When God said to "have dominion", he wasn't talking about acting like a swarm of locusts, devouring everything in our path. He wants us to be gardeners... cultivators. He doesn't want us to destroy, he wants us to prune. Remove the dead branches, and cut back the ones that are growing the wrong way.

There's a balance between having perfect cookie-cutter trees and shrubs and having a chaotic mess. Look at the art of bonsai. A person will spend decades on a tree that doesn't grow more than 18 inches tall... that person will use snips, wire, and a lot of T.L.C. to bring out the natural beauty of this little plant. Just looking at the variations between two bonsai trees, it's easy to tell there's a balance at work.

We're to have dominion over nature like God has dominion over us. God doesn't make cookie-cutter Christians - *we* tend to be the ones to do that. God is like a bonsai gardener: he'll spend a decade getting one of your branches to look the way he always envisioned it. If you decide you're going to shoot off to the left, instead of the right, he'll work on you until you're absolutely beautiful in his eyes. Sometimes he'll use wire to bend you, sometimes he'll cut off sprouts he doesn't want to branch off. But within the boundaries of his guidance and direction, he allows you to grow and bloom. He wants to see you add your own individual twists and turns - the things that make you unique... the things that give him something to guide.