Friday, November 20, 2009

The Gate is Open

from 11//20/09
Gate torn open by a severe wind storm
The huge November windstorm last week took the double garden gate, swept it off the poles, heaved the pins and latches about the yard and scattered the now single gates down the rock stairs leaving a wide hole open to the destructive deer.The timing was perfect. I needed a reference image.

As I toil fighting weeds, I've  often pondered the relationship between the original garden called Eden and the gardens we have here now. In Eden, Adam and Eve walked and talked with God in childlike dependence, and bindweed and thistle behaved. Adam and Eve had free will yet chose to obey God in every way, until the serpent, Satan in disguise, convinced them otherwise. They ate of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and for their protection, God banished them from the garden with no longer access to the tree of everlasting life.

"God said to Adam:
 'Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, '"You must not eat of it," 'Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field....'" Genesis 3:1718 NIV

As you know, everything changed from then on. The gates locked behind them, cherubim were placed, guarding the entrance, and now began pain, weeds, toil, work and death on this side of Eden for all generations forward.

 Yet because God so loved us, He sent His son Jesus, that whomever shall believe in Him shall have everlasting life.(John 3:16) and the Holy Spirit comes to live in our hearts and open wide the garden gate with the wind of the Spirit to enable us to walk and talk together once again.

Thank you LORD for hope, renewal and life, and your great wind of the Spirit that opens Your gates so we can commune. Thank you, that I can even talk with you about the bindweed and thistles.

No comments: