There are a few obsessions I have -- apart from John Piper, of course. One is resurrection. I am in love with new life and resurrection language and imagery, but this is a topic for another day. I am also obsessed with this idea of reconciliation and its dark cause and wonderful fulfillment in both future hope and present relational experience of the God of the universe, but this can wait too.
The garden. My obsession with the garden finds its root in the fact that I was made for it. The Pentateuch opens with anticipation, expectation, pregnant mystery giving birth to the land conceived in eternity past. "In the beginning" to the modern reader sounds so antiquated, but at the beginning these words could only look ahead to a living, breathing land that was full of perfect and glorious means and ends. Yes, means AND ends.
God knew them both. The wonder and mystery of the end. The tragedy and triumph of the means. Life is precious, but life out of death is thrilling, an unexpected plot twist in the ever darkening cosmic story; he who finds life past the brink of death finds its true meaning.
This garden life envelopes time and space. In the beginning, the garden tells us of what should have been the true man as he walked side by side with his Creator. At the end, the garden awaits once more, the hope of restoration and everlasting fulfillment. Between these bookends, as men endure the hell of turning away from God and condemn themselves to a true, literal hell, the anti-garden, one emerges living the life that every one of us secretly wants and knows we should have lived. This one true man comes with a message: Trust me, lay your heavy burdens and your dead life on me that I may free you to walk in all the fullness of mine.
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