Back to the Garden

OK...Not the real garden, but you get the idea.

Genesis 1:31  

 

New International Version (NIV)

    ³¹ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. 

Creation in its original state must have been amazing to see.  All created things...nature as we know it plus the atmosphere, space, etc, all in balance and functioning perfectly.  No death.  No want.  No fear.  Man was placed there to be a caretaker and to live there and enjoy it, all in the presence of God.  The Garden was our home, made just for us and uniquely suited to our needs and desires.

Genesis 2

New International Version (NIV)

⁸ Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ The LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 

But it did not stay that way.  When Mankind stepped out of God's will and went his/her own way, then sin entered the world and corrupted it all.  And the result of that was the end of that perfect symbiosis and we were left with the fallen and suffering, groaning creation we have today.

Romans 8:22

New International Version (NIV)

  
²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

And we were banished from the Garden.

 Genesis 3

New International Version (NIV)

²³ So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. ²⁴ After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side^[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

 I was watching a documentary about a man named Wavy Gravy.  Not his given name, but his taken name that fits his life perfectly.  Wavy was and is a hippie.  His life is quite interesting and the film was pretty amazing in itself, but it struck me in a way I had never considered before.

The hippie movement of the 60s was an attempt to get back to the garden.  Even the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song speaks to that.  The rejection of the commercial and possession centered life and the societal definition of success, the attempt at community (the commune life), the simple things and a care for creation and human needs.  There was no need in the first Garden.  Life was natural and simple and we were connected to all creation.  There was no poverty or greed.  Everything worked like it was supposed to.

But there was a flaw in the hippie movement.  A flaw that is in any attempt to accomplish anything by our own efforts alone.  They forgot God.  There were gods for sure.  Hallucinogenic drugs.  Sex.  Meditation.  Spiritualism.  But not God.   And without that part, they missed it all.  No Garden.  No way to get there. 

But the Garden is waiting till a future time.  Christ's work on the cross was not just for our redemption, but was far reaching, extending to all creation.  Creation is now groaning and awaiting the time when there is balance and perfection;  man, God, creation in the proper place and relationship; when poverty and suffering and greed and all the things the hippies sought to change in a man-made utopia are finally removed through the shed blood of Christ and the work of His hands.

We will get back to the Garden and maybe we will wear tie-dye there.  Who knows.

Isaiah 65 - A new heaven and a new earth

¹⁷ “See, I will create
   new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
   nor will they come to mind.
¹⁸ But be glad and rejoice forever
   in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
   and its people a joy.
¹⁹ I will rejoice over Jerusalem
   and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
   will be heard in it no more.
 ²⁰ “Never again will there be in it
   an infant who lives but a few days,
   or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
   will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach^[a] a hundred
   will be considered accursed.
²¹ They will build houses and dwell in them;
   they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
²² No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
   or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
   so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
   the work of their hands.
²³ They will not labor in vain,
   nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the LORD,
   they and their descendants with them.
²⁴ Before they call I will answer;
   while they are still speaking I will hear.
²⁵ The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
   and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
   and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
   on all my holy mountain,”
            says the LORD.

Psalm 19 experience

 Psalm 19 ^1-6

    For the director of music. A psalm of David. ¹ The heavens declare the glory of God;
   the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
² Day after day they pour forth speech;
   night after night they reveal knowledge.
³ They have no speech, they use no words;
   no sound is heard from them.
⁴ Yet their voice^[b] goes out into all the earth,
   their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
 ⁵ It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
   like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
⁶ It rises at one end of the heavens
   and makes its circuit to the other;
   nothing is deprived of its warmth. 

I was picking up my son to go to a church event for the college group and this happened as I was waiting.  Glorious, yes.

I thought of Psalm 19 right away, quoted above in part.  At the conference the first speaker I heard was teaching from this exact text and others that show creation attesting to God's glory.  He noted that the rocks, trees, and sky do a better job of glorifying God consistently than he does in his life outwardly.

I related to that.  My life is still too much about me and my undeserved glory and too little about God and His deserved glory.  I will never match that sunset, not in this life, but perhaps I can do as well as a rock at some point.  If dirt can glorify God, so can I.

The shape of things.

One of my favorite things to do is look down at the earth from an airplane window.  The topography fascinates me.  You can see the way mountains rise out of the plains; canyons carved into the land drain into rivers and valleys.  God made an amazing world and I love His creation.

But it is flawed.  As incredible as creation is, it is fallen.

From the book, 'Heaven', by Randy Alcorn:

"We have never seen the Earth as God made it.  Our planet as we know it is a shadowy, halftone image of the original.  But it does whet our appetites for the New Earth, doesn't it?  If the present Earth, so diminished by the Curse, is at times so beautiful and wonderful; if our bodies, so diminished by the Curse, are at times overcome with a sense of the Earth's beauty; then how magnificent will the New Earth be?  And what will it be like to experience the New Earth in something else we have never known:  perfect bodies?"

I love being in the world we have and it constantly reminds me of the Creator.

Psalm 19

For the director of music. A psalm of David.

 ¹ The heavens declare the glory of God; 
       the skies proclaim the work of his hands.


But I am also constantly aware that it is broken and not what it was intended to be.  Just like me.  In God's time, that will all be put right.  The same sin that causes me to fall and fail; that curse that Adam brought down on me brought down creation along with it.

Christ's resurrection has broken that curse, but it has yet to be realized.  There will come a time when it will all be made right again, both the Earth and I.  I can only imagine what it will be like, as I catch fleeting glimpses and shadows of the beauty to come.

Until that time, I will make do with looking out of airplane windows.

Honey Bee Polka

"Honey bee dancing, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of their biology, is also one of the most fascinating behaviors in animal life. Performed by a worker bee that has returned to the honey comb with pollen or nectar, the dances, in essence, constitute a language that “tells” other workers where the food is. By signaling both distance and direction with particular movements, the worker bee uses the dance language to recruit and direct other workers in gathering pollen and nectar. " From the net

I like to watch the different science channels, Discovery, Smithsonian, etc.  However that requires I wade through all the religious indoctrination of Mr. Darwin and his ilk.  Time and time again we hear how this evolved and that evolved over zillions of years to be what it is today, and isn't that amazing?   Expert scientists attest to the complex way that nature has ordered herself, all with no master at the helm...just monkeys at a keyboard with time on their hands.

More a matter of the heart than of intellect, denying God as the creator and master of creation allows one to operate detached from any compulsion to a God and His will.  If you accept there is a God, then it stands to reason that one should find out what He wants from you....why you exist at all.  If He has rules, you would then have to consider the fact that you are not living by them, therefore, you are, in the end, accountable to that God.

Can't have that.  Darwin and the Science Channel make no such demands of moral accountability.

So all this occurred to me as I was looking at a honey bee on the ground outside of work.  There are commercial hives near there and there are thousands of bees flying to and fro getting the honey-dos done.  I thought of how that bee finds a flower and brings that message to the waiting colony back at 'Da' Hive'.  And I wondered...if these bees took millions of years to figure this out, how did the first bees do it?

For example:

Millions of years ago, bee number 12 comes back to the hive after striking it rich juuust over the next hill.  He points to the hill, but no one can see anything, so they are less than excited about it.  He thinks about doing the bee mime act.  Marcel Marceau Bee gives it a shot and only conveys the impression that he is behind an invisible door, pulling on a rope no one can see.  If only he had white bee gloves.

A few thousand years later, another bee comes to the same situation and, still having no white gloves or little French hat, comes up with the dance idea.  Unfortunately he is a lousy dancer and lacking any sense of rhythm, he cannot for the life of him make anything coherent out of it. He feels embarrassed and vows never to go to the prom where this horror would be relived in front of his peers.

How about if the bee is like my wife and cannot remember the names of any streets or roads?  She can get ya' there, but only if she drives.  How does that fit in?

Or maybe the bee has a lousy sense of direction and while he can dance like Fred Astaire with a road map in his hand, he mistakenly wiggles his butt North, when he wanted to point South.  An entire squadron of bees is never heard from again as they fly off to their doom.  I have a friend like that...cannot hit his 'south' end with both hands.  Sad.

Or how about this.  God, the creator of the the bee, the flower, the earth, the universe...He gave the bee what it needed just like He gave the flower, the earth, and the universe what it needed, right from the beginning.

No dancing lessons required.

Romans 1:20 (New International Version)

²⁰For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.