For all of history, men and women have yearned to get back to the garden. Back to innocence from pain, sorrow, sin, disease, hunger, conflict, racism, disappointment, and death. As Crosby, Stills and Nash sang at Woodstock, “We are stardust, we are golden, and we have to get back to the garden.” We know we have lost something precious and that we live with the consequences on a daily basis. How do we get back to the garden?
The creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 describe that garden. After each of the creation days, we read this statement: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” Now, if God thinks something is very good, it has to be very, very good.
The most stunning part of the creation account is this. Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground. So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” - Genesis 1:26-28.
Here is the stunning thing: God not only chose to create us knowing that we would turn our backs on Him, but he chose to create us in His image. He chose to plant in our souls something of Him. The creator created mankind with something of Him implanted within them. In some amazing ways, he created Adam and Eve in His image and although flawed by the fall, each of us is also made in His image.
As image bearers, we have the ability to have a relationship with our creator, He gave us moral freedom to choose to follow or not to follow Him, He shared with us His creative spirit and gave us the ability to love both Him and one another, along with an eternal soul. Human life is special and sacred because we are made in His image. In fact, both your best friend and worst enemy have something of God within them, for both are made in His image. Even knowing that the fall would take place and that man would sin and, in doing so, reject Him, He chose to create us in His image.
When we long to be back in the garden where the effects of sin no longer chase us, here is the amazing thing. God wants to bring us back to the garden as well. That is why the incarnation of Christ, the Advent, was planned long before the world came to be. The creator wanted His created to be reconciled to Him, so the creator became like the created in the incarnation to die and rise and pay our penalty and make peace with Him. That is Advent.
The story of Advent is a story of love in the face of rebellion, a divine rescue mission to make a way for us to go back home to Him. This is why Jesus said to His disciples on the eve of His death, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And then He says, I call you friends. You are His friend if you know Him. If you don’t, He invites you to meet Him. This is why He came.
PRAYER
Father, I thank you that there is a way back to the garden through your divine rescue mission to forgive our sin and make us again part of your family. Give me deeper appreciation this Advent season for the price you paid to right the wrong of sin. In the garden and in me. Amen
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