I have loved reading the stories by Oscar Wilde this week and there are one or two more to write about because they are so lovely.

The Selfish Giant begins by describing the most idyllic garden … “Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit.” The children would play in the garden each day on their way home from school and it made them happy.

The Selfish Giant returns from visiting his friend the Cornish ogre and banishes the children from his garden, building a high wall all around it, “my own garden is my own garden … anyone can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself.”

The story goes that without the children, Spring did not visit the garden anymore and the Giant lived in perpetual Winter. The fable ends happily when the heart of the Giant is captured by a particular child (who turns out to be Jesus) and he realises his selfishness. He takes a great axe and knocks down the wall he had put up to keep the children away, saying “it is your garden now, little children.”

What I love most about this story is what it says about the way we choose to live our lives, and the blessings we have been entrusted with. Sometimes pain and fear can paralyse a person from living openly, but I guess this tale was more about the giant experiencing the blessing that comes with blessing other people. Wilde conveys so beautifully the idea that the antidote to bleakness in our world is opening it to others, if we can through God’s grace, and sharing what He has given us.

A verse in The Message version of the Bible along these lines is “keep open house; be generous with your lives” in Matthew 5:14. And this verse too, “I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life .… Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!” 2 Corinthians 6:11.

The pink blossoms are from the walk last weekend.