God’s Garden, Our Garden

Isn’t it amazing: God created everything with a purpose, made to fit together for a perfect and orderly world. The man and woman as human partners were given the responsibility to tend the garden. They were also given the freedom of choice to use and enjoy everything in the garden. They had but one rule to obey: they must not eat of the tree of knowledge on penalty of death.

That might seem easy, even for us today. Except that we get stuck on the choice part. We think it is our choice to obey or not, to care for the world and its people or to take what we want for ourselves.

We humans were meant to live together as a caring community. To make that happen, God took our humanity. God chose to tend to the needs of the people. God chose to pay the penalty of death for all of our disobedience. God chose to give us the Spirit to help us learn to live in solidarity as a body-the body of Christ. God makes us able to work together to build up community through forgiveness and service with and for one another.

Creating, forgiving, enlivening God, help us to make right choices to care for one another and enjoy your world. Amen. — JCH