Deep Calls Out to Deep

In the garden, one of the great old hymns.  You know it, and He walks with me and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own. Think about the garden for a second, the original one.  The Garden of Eden. What would our lives been like there?  Can you imagine Adam and Eve actually walking and talking with God?  Daily communion with Him. His presence, His voice, His playfulness with children He loves.  What have we lost?

My dad used to tell us playful untruths.  Kids today probably wouldn’t get this but before you could stream whatever you wanted whenever you wanted, certain things coming on television were an event. The Wizard of Oz was one such event.  Before my sister and I could read, he would see in the TV Guide (once again, foreign to kids) that it was coming on that night.  He would say kids, if you’re really good today and you clean your rooms, I’ll call the network and tell them to put The Wizard of Oz on for you tonight.  We were amazed.  He also told me that the tallest hill in the world was in Columbia SC.  Then on a trip when I was about 16, we were standing at the Mississippi River.  He said look kids, the longest river in the world.  I said, “Dad, isn’t that the Nile?” He said, “Everything was so much more fun when you were little.”  To some degree he was right.  There was a magic in his mischief, mixed with the things I didn’t know.

To me Eden feels a little like that. Of course, God was never remotely dishonest with His children.  But I imagine such an innocence, exploration, newness, joy, and closeness with the Creator. I have heard people say that when Eve took that bite of whatever fruit she bit (I know the speculation is an apple, but we don’t honestly know what she bit.  I personally would not have taken humanity out for an apple, chocolate maybe) I digress, some say when she took that bite, she unleashed sin.  Now that isn’t true. The serpent was in the garden.  Sin and evil were in the world as was good and right, what was unleashed was our knowledge of it.

When the serpent told her, “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Well, the serpent didn’t really lie.  He just didn’t tell her the whole truth. He didn’t tell her, that she can’t be enough like God. He didn’t tell her that she would have knowledge of good and evil but not a compass enough to know what to do with that knowledge. For instance, some plants are poisonous but mixed with other plants, they’re medicine. Some strangers do awful things and we feel one way about them. Our kids do something awful and though we don’t tolerate it, our hearts bleed differently.  We do not have the wherewithal to handle the knowledge that was unleashed to us and that’s where we are.

I am intrigued by verses like Proverbs 2:6-7 and James 1:5 that God delights in sharing His wisdom with us.  What would wisdom from God have looked like on His timetable instead of humans trying to take it? Maybe it would have looked like the beauty of Pentecost all communications freely flowing instead of the Tower of Babel, all communications confused when there was a prideful reason for it, not God’s glory.

But what does all this mean for us?  We are in a place with knowledge that we aren’t quite equipped to handle and a longing for daily communion with our Creator that was ripped away. I love the song Awesome God by Rich Mullins and I admit the line ‘the Lord, He wasn’t joking when He kicked em out of Eden’, gave me a picture at church camp of a tough no nonsense God and sometimes we need that and He is that. I remember kicking my leg to the to the side really getting into it as a teenager. But honestly kicking the children out of Eden was the most merciful, loving thing God could have done at that moment.  We, as humans had unleashed one thing we shouldn’t have, and that made the possibility of unleashing something else, terrifying. The tree of life. We were now separate from God. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice there is a way that we can regain full communion with God. It is only through human death. We get glimpses of glory now, time with Him, scripture revelation, sometimes the perfect worship song, or honestly even the perfect Nina Simone song (don’t judge me). But here, we would have never gotten all the way back. So, God said no, and He shut the garden door (what a terrifying sound that must have been), and put an angel at the door.  He said I will make this separation as brief as possible, My loves.

Also, interesting fact, Jesus is in Genesis! Genesis 3:15, the Protoevangelium (first mention of salvation).  

(to the serpent) “And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

Genesis 3:15

That guy crushing his head, yeah, we know Him. The devil is going down.  God said you talk to Me, not my precious children!

But in the meantime, here we are, out of the garden, not understanding how to make sense of a weary world, with truths we can’t handle. Honestly, I struggle with the mental health of that. I have been known to struggle with depression, but now I prefer to say I am a daughter of Jerusalem, lovesick for my Beloved. That sounds entirely better and honestly, more accurate.

But He is coming.  Even when His children disobeyed, even when they hid, even when they wearied Him, He never stopped making sure there was a way back to Him. And in the meantime, He has sent the Holy Spirit, the mediator He promised to help us discern the truth we can’t handle. All will be restored and because of Jesus until then, we will be okay. Rejoice, He is risen!