It has been said that the entirety of redemptive history can be summed up by a visit to two gardens. The first garden at the earliest place in recorded history…a place of beauty and perfection where a declaration of supreme good was given by the Creator. In this garden the Creator walked with the creature in the cool of the day in unspoiled fellowship and felicity. The relationship between Creator and creature continued unsullied until the creature bowed his back and pushed himself away from the Creator in his twists and turns of sin and rebellion. No longer in fellowship the creature hid in embarrassment and shame. The garden grew full of thorns and weeds. Once held in joyful submission to the creature the creation itself now spun out of control, groaning under the weight of the creature at odds. The garden itself became a symbol of the Creator/creature relationship gone bad. Years would pass, but these were years given with a promise; a promise that someday all would be made right again, thorns would no longer infest the ground and felicity would one day be restored. In the first garden Adam had made a mess, but in the second garden another Adam would make a way. He would be a second Adam, a better Adam, a complexity of both Creator and creature, a God-man whose entry into a garden came not by life, but by death. He would be the head of a new nation, bought with a price. A willing humiliation His death would ensure not only life, but also the death of death itself and the promise of life without end. Jesus, as the second Adam entered the second garden. He whose brutalized and lifeless body descended into a dark tomb in the second garden would also be raised in that same garden on the third day. From that day forward the earnest money of a new creation, an incorruptible and glorious creation, has been received. The promise given has become the promise kept, and will one day be the promise fully and finally received. As we recount our own lives, two gardens tell the story.
- DJM
Sunday - January 3rd, 2021
