Gardening and Health

Let men and women work in field and orchard and garden. This will bring health and strength to nerve and muscle. Living indoors and cherishing invalidism is a very poor business. If those who are sick will give nerves and muscles and sinews proper exercise in the open air, their health will be renewed.MM 296.4

The most astonishing ignorance prevails in regard to putting brain, bone, and muscle into active service. Every part of the human organism should be equally taxed. This is necessary for the harmonious development and action of every part.MM 296.5

Many do not see the importance of having land to cultivate, and of raising fruit and vegetables that their tables may be supplied with these things. I am instructed to say to every family and every church, God will bless you when you work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, fearing lest, by unwise treatment of the body, you will mar the Lord's plan for you.MM 296.6

Many act as if health and disease were things entirely independent of their conduct and entirely outside their control. They do not reason from cause to effect, and submit to feebleness and disease as a necessity. Violent attacks of sickness they believe to be special dispensations of Providence, or the result of some overruling, mastering power; and they resort to drugs as a cure for the evil. But the drugs taken to cure the disease weaken the system.MM 296.7

Regular Exercise

If those who are sick would exercise their muscles daily, women as well as men, in outdoor work, using brain, bone, and muscle proportionately, weakness and languor would disappear. Health would take the place of disease, and strength the place of feebleness.MM 297.1

Let those who are sick do all in their power, by correct practice in eating, drinking, and dressing, and by taking judicious exercise, to secure recovery of health. Let the patients who come to our sanitariums be taught to cooperate with God in seeking health. “Ye are God's husbandry, ye are God's building.” God made nerve and muscle in order that they might be used. It is the inaction of the human machinery that brings suffering and disease.—Letter 5, 1904.MM 297.2

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