We've got to get ourselves back to the Garden ...

Listen here:  http://www.pastorwoman.com/podcasts/99b21434-312c-470a-8726-4f75b0c...

Here's how it happened in the beginning: the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man's nostrils, and the man became a living person. Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground-trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit.1

There was Adam, then Eve, in the Garden.

Seems absolutely fitting that God placed the first human beings in a garden. Fertile, peaceful, colorful, nourishing, inspirational, and a sanctuary for animals. But one thing bugs me: so very little attention is given to life in that first Garden. The Story seems to jump so quickly from the perfect to the flawed when our first parents made a willful choice - because they thought they knew better than God.

Why do we spend so very little time talking about the First Garden, and the 'before' part? I mean seriously, what would it have been like to have been perfect human beings, living in a garden that supplied everything necessary for life ... where flowers and trees of every variety were all around ... where all of the animal kingdom peacefully coexisted ... as a man and woman who lived freely, with no care for tomorrow ... who loved freely - God and each other? There really is not a great adjective to describe it except maybe idyllic, and even that falls short.

Oh, and one more thing about that Garden: the man and woman got to walk and talk with God: "Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day..."2 Can. You. Just. Imagine. ~ being physically in God's presence? Oh, my goodness!

Note to self: when God planned all of this, he wanted to have a for real, intimate relationship, with nothing coming between us and him: not only no clothes, but no shame, no pain, no distraction - just love, and life and good living. Did I mention it was to be like this forever?

We were meant to live in that Garden, Friends, and whether we know it or not, our hearts long for everything about the Garden of Eden . . . for that life. The old hymnwriter seemed to know something about it in the song I played for my dad:

'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...

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.

He speaks and the sound of His voice is so sweet the birds hush their singing and the melody that he gave to me within my heart is ringing...' ah man, can you just picture being in that Garden?

'I'd stay in the garden with him 'tho the night around me be falling' . . . well, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhIGIfsLxVk, Alan Jackson. Hmmm, I played it on the piano at my dad's funeral, my dear brother Mike sang it. In. The. Garden.

That first Garden - it is where we were meant to be, where we were meant to live. And since it was God's plan, from the moment we left the Garden, God began making a way to get us back to the garden.

We are meant to have a daily personal relationship with God.

Because he loves us individually and personally,

Christine

PastorWoman.net

1 - Genesis chapter 2.7ff

2 - Genesis 3.8