I was driving along a residential road in Buckinghamshire the other day, when I passed this sign. It actually said
“To Let EDEN” obviously a Letting agent’s sign. But it got me thinking fortunately there were some traffic lights a bit further on that gave me a few moments to think safely that’s really the sign that God, the Creator might have erected at the entrance to that most wonderful of gardens he had planted that we read about in Genesis 2. And he let it to the man and woman he had created. Adam & Eve must have had a wonderful time enjoying the fruits of God’s handiwork. But they were only tenants. The garden belonged to the Lord. Later, when Lot surveyed the plain of Jordan in Gen 13:10, he likened it in his mind to ’the garden of the Lord’. Adam had a responsibility to ’work it and take care of it’ 2:15. God would bring forth the flowers and fruits, the vegetables and vegetation, but man’s responsibility was, and is, to work, care
and nurture the land. It reminds us that we still should be good stewards of the world around us.
Sadly, of course, only some 33 verses later we read how God had to end the tenancy of Eden by driving out the man because of the tragic breaking of trust between Adam & Eve and God. Sin had entered to spoil God’s wonderful garden and, in effect the sign ‘No Vacancies’ went up. What a mercy, though, that the loving but just Creator, had a way planned that he would save sinful mankind, and those who would trust in His Son, that he had paid the penalty for their sins on the cross, would receive new life. Of course, our very lives – the bodies we inhabit are only let to us. We’re only tenants.
Paul writing to the Corinthian church (1 Cor 6: 19-20) uses the picture of the temple. ’Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body.’ Perhaps we might liken our redeemed lives to ’the garden of the Lord’
they need to be cared for and nurtured both physically and spiritually. As we celebrate another material harvest with
thankfulness to God, what sort of harvest fruitfulness is there to be seen in our lives?
Steve Piggott
October 2014
Comments on this entry are closed.