Gardening Bible Quotes

By the way, if you get mad at your Mac laptop and wonder who designed this demonic device, notice the manufacturer's icon on top: an apple with a bite out of it.

We may with confidence approach the throne. We may walk in the garden with Him once again.

The Bible is the story of two gardens: Eden and Gethsemane. In the first, Adam took a fall. In the second, Jesus took a stand. In the first, God sought Adam. In the second, Jesus sought God. In Eden, Adam hid from God. In Gethsemane, Jesus emerged from the tomb. In Eden, Satan led Adam to a tree that led to his death. From Gethsemane, Jesus went to a tree that led to our life.

I am officially Jewish, but I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant.

You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred to in the Bible?' he asked. 'You know what was in that apple? Logic. Logic and intellectual stuff. That was all that was in it. So—this is my point—what you have to do is vomit it up if you want to see things as they really are....' The trouble is,' Teddy said, 'most people don't want to see things the way they are. They don't even want to stop getting born and dying all the time, instead of stopping and staying with God, where it's really nice.' He reflected. 'I never saw such a bunch of apple-eaters,' he said. He shook his head.

From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story.

God must have known that, in the end, Adam and Eve would eat the apple and have to leave the Garden. But he had bigger plans for them and for the rest of humanity that requires a short stint here in our imperfect world. That is the only way for us to experience all of the joys, the sorrows, the failures, and the triumphs that come with being fully human.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. John 15:1

You know, we can quote the written Word all day to our friends, but nothing will touch them like our own hunger and love for the Word himself. It is not dutiful love that attracts but love freely lavished from a heart familiar with the gardens of heaven.

When my husband had an affair with someone else I watched his eyes glaze over when we ate dinner together and I heard him singing to himself without me, and when he tended the garden it was not for me. He was courteous and polite; he enjoyed being at home, but in the fantasy of his home I was not the one who sat opposite him and laughed at his jokes. He didn't want to change anything; he liked his life. The only thing he wanted to change was me. It would have been better if he had hated me, or if he had abused me, or if he had packed his new suitcases and left. As it was he continued to put his arm round me and talk about being a new wall to replace the rotten fence that divided our garden from his vegetable patch. I knew he would never leave our house. He had worked for it. Day by day I felt myself disappearing. For my husband I was no longer a reality, I was one of the things around him. I was the fence which needed to be replaced. I watched myself in the mirror and saw that I was mo longer vivid and exciting. I was worn and gray like an old sweater you can't throw out but won't put on. He admitted he was in love with her, but he said he loved me. Translated, that means, I want everything. Translated, that means, I don't want to hurt you yet. Translated, that means, I don't know what to do, give me time. Why, why should I give you time? What time are you giving me? I am in a cell waiting to be called for execution. I loved him and I was in love with him. I didn't use language to make a war-zone of my heart. 'You're so simple and good,' he said, brushing the hair from my face. He meant, Your emotions are not complex like mine. My dilemma is poetic. But there was no dilemma. He no longer wanted me, but he wanted our life Eventually, when he had been away with her for a few days and returned restless and conciliatory, I decided not to wait in my cell any longer. I went to where he was sleeping in another room and I asked him to leave. Very patiently he asked me to remember that the house was his home, that he couldn't be expected to make himself homeless because he was in love. 'Medea did,' I said, 'and Romeo and Juliet and Cressida, and Ruth in the Bible.' He asked me to shut up. He wasn't a hero. 'Then why should I be a heroine?' He didn't answer, he plucked at the blanket. I considered my choices. I could stay and be unhappy and humiliated. I could leave and be unhappy and dignified. I could Beg him to touch me again. I could live in hope and die of bitterness. I took some things and left. It wasn't easy, it was my home too. I hear he's replaced the back fence.

I wrote too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak But I know now it doesn't matter how well I say grace if I am sitting at a table where I am offering no bread to eat So this is my wheat field you can have every acre, Love this is my garden song this is my fist fight with that bitter frost tonight I begged another stage light to become that back alley street lamp that we danced beneath the night your warm mouth fell on my timid cheek as i sang maybe i need you off key but in tune maybe i need you the way that big moon needs that open sea maybe i didn't even know i was here til i saw you holding me give me one room to come home to give me the palm of your hand every strand of my hair is a kite string and I have been blue in the face with your sky crying a flood over Iowa so you mother will wake to Venice Lover, I smashed my glass slipper to build a stained glass window for every wall inside my chest now my heart is a pressed flower and a tattered bible it is the one verse you can trust so I'm putting all of my words in the collection plate I am setting the table with bread and grace my knees are bent like the corner of a page I am saving your place

A loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene.

A child's instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting; a child always stands for the good militarism as against the bad. The child's hero is always the man or boy who defends himself suddenly and splendidly against aggression. The child's hero is never the man or boy who attempts by his mere personal force to extend his mere personal influence. In all boys' books, in all boys' conversation, the hero is one person and the bully the other. That combination of the hero and bully in one, which people now call the Strong Man or the Superman, would be simply unintelligible to any schoolboy.... But really to talk of this small human creature, who never picks up an umbrella without trying to use it as a sword, who will hardly read a book in which there is no fighting, who out of the Bible itself generally remembers the "bluggy" [bloody] parts, who never walks down the garden without imagining himself to be stuck all over with swords and daggers--to take this human creature and talk about the wickedness of teaching him to be military, seems rather a wild piece of humour. He has already not only the tradition of fighting, but a far manlier and more genial tradition of fighting than our own. No; I am not in favour of the child being taught militarism. I am in favour of the child teaching it.

This century will be called Darwin's century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the Bible is a book written by ignorance--at the instigation of fear. Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin, and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a believer in the theories of Charles Darwin--a man of more genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together. ...The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; that the Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth; that the doctrine of original sin has no foundation in fact; that the atonement is an absurdity; that the serpent did not tempt, and that man did not 'fall.' Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox Christianity. There is nothing left but faith in what we know could not and did not happen. Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.

Back in the Garden of Eden, maybe the forbidden fruit was forbidden for a reason. Who needs the fancy building, the priest and all the rest of it—even the Bible—if all you really need is the fruit?

You know that apple Adam ate in the Garden of Eden, referred to in the Bible?’ he asked. ‘You know what was in that apple? Logic. Logic and intellectual stuff. That was all that was in it. So—this is my point—what you have to do is vomit it up if you want to see things as they really are.

They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden; that mushrooms are as edible as corn-beef hash; that the word "dude" is no longer frequently used; that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of apparent intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight; that it is not a universal custom to wear scratchy flannels next the skin in winter; that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ; that some poets do not have long hair; and that Jews are not always peddlers or pants-makers. "Where does she get all them theories?" marveled Uncle Whittier Smail; while Aunt Bessie inquired, "Do you suppose there's many folks got notions like hers? My! If there are," and her tone settled the fact that there were not, "I just don't know what the world's coming to!

I wonder what God must have thought then / When He saw the work of Cain's hand / That the first baby born on the planet / Grew up to kill the third man.

She was under her husband's headship, yet she was in many ways an even more glorious creature than he, treasured and extolled by him. They were partners and companions, fellow-laborers in the garden.

I especially loved the Old Testament. Even as a kid I had a sense of it being slightly illicit. As though someone had slipped an R-rated action movie into a pile of Disney DVDs. For starters Adam and Eve were naked on the first page. I was fascinated by Eve's ability to always stand in the Garden of Eden so that a tree branch or leaf was covering her private areas like some kind of organic bakini. But it was the Bible's murder and mayhem that really got my attention. When I started reading the real Bible I spent most of my time in Genesis Exodus 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings. Talk about violent. Cain killed Abel. The Egyptians fed babies to alligators. Moses killed an Egyptian. God killed thousands of Egyptians in the Red Sea. David killed Goliath and won a girl by bringing a bag of two hundred Philistine foreskins to his future father-in-law. I couldn't believe that Mom was so happy about my spending time each morning reading about gruesome battles prostitutes fratricide murder and adultery. What a way to have a "quiet time." While I grew up with a fairly solid grasp of Bible stories I didn't have a clear idea of how the Bible fit together or what it was all about. I certainly didn't understand how the exciting stories of the Old Testament connected to the rather less-exciting New Testament and the story of Jesus. This concept of the Bible as a bunch of disconnected stories sprinkled with wise advice and capped off with the inspirational life of Jesus seems fairly common among Christians. That is so unfortunate because to see the Bible as one book with one author and all about one main character is to see it in its breathtaking beauty.

Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible – the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green.

First, I have not minded so much leaving the Garden because God, blessed be his holy name, has never abandoned us.

It's full of festering poison, this place, and it looks as peaceful and as innocent as the Garden of Eden." "Even there," said Owen drily, "there was one serpent.

It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.

And the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.

The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor's error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five. 2. And bye the border of Dan, fromme the east side fo the west side, a portion for Afher. 3. And by the border of Afher, fromme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali. 4. And by the border of Naphtali, from the east side untoe the west side, a portion for Manaffeh. 5. Buggre Alle this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typefettinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone withe half and oz of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe. @ *"Æ@;!* 6. And bye the border of Ephraim, from the east fide even untoe the west fide, a portion for Reuben.* * The Buggre Alle This Bible was also noteworthy for having twenty-seven verses in the third chapter of Genesis, instead of the more usual twenty-four. They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads: "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life," and read: 25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee? 26 And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my head next. 27 And the Lord did not ask him again.

It was them and not them, maybe the ones they’d never been. I could almost see those others standing in the garden where the pea plants were, feet planted between the rows. They stood without moving, their faces glowing with some shine a long time gone. A time before I lived. Their arms hung at their sides. They’d always been there, I thought blearily, and they’d always wanted to be more than they were. They should always be thought of as invalids, I saw. Each person, fully grown, was sick or sad, with problems attached to them like broken limbs. Each one had special needs. If you could remember that, it made you less angry. They’d been carried along on their hopes, held up by the chance of a windfall. But instead of a windfall there was only time passing. And all they ever were was themselves. Still they had wanted to be different. I would assume that from now on, I told myself, wandering back into the barn. What people wanted to be, but never could, traveled along beside them. Company.

It has always been a mystery to me how Adam, Eve, and the serpent were taught the same language. Where did they get it? We know now, that it requires a great number of years to form a language; that it is of exceedingly slow growth. We also know that by language, man conveys to his fellows the impressions made upon him by what he sees, hears, smells and touches. We know that the language of the savage consists of a few sounds, capable of expressing only a few ideas or states of the mind, such as love, desire, fear, hatred, aversion and contempt. Many centuries are required to produce a language capable of expressing complex ideas. It does not seem to me that ideas can be manufactured by a deity and put in the brain of man. These ideas must be the result of observation and experience.

The Bible has come under fire for making woman the fall guy in man's cosmic drama. But in casting a male conspirator, the serpent, as God's enemy, Genesis hedges and does not take its misogyny far enough. The Bible defensively swerves from God's true opponent, chthonian nature. The serpent is not outside Eve but in her. She is the garden and the serpent.

If Miss Watson had told Huck what the Bible says about living in a resurrected body and being with people we love on a resurrected Earth with gardens and rivers and mountains and untold adventures--now that would have gotten his attention.

It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden—that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time.

Genesis 10:7 is probably the most important verse in the Bible for the purposes of identifying the location of the Garden of Eden. This is because it groups Cush and Havilah together as son and grandson of Ham, the African hot countries. Eden was therefore a place in the region of the historically famous Cush.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

In Proverbs, a wisdom book of the Hebrew Scriptures, a cat would find a few “wisdom” passages as noxious as the Garden of Eden passages. Again the symbology of fruit being eaten

river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.

The tree of life was in the midst of the garden,  hand the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

15The LORD God took the man  kand put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Did God actually say, ‘You [1] shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?

You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil  lyou shall not eat, for in the day that you eat [4] of it you  mshall surely die.

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.

...the concept of marketing is almost as old as humanity itself...suffice it to say here that it took almost no time for a wily serpent to sell Adam and Eve on a shiny apple from the Tree of Knowledge, at which point they became not only the first humans but also the first marketing demographic, and God expelled them from the Garden of Eden for being total consumerist dupes. (p. 40)

Isaiah 58:11 And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy they soul in drought, and make fat they bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

For in that perfect garden when one day entered sin, An animal was murdered for garments made of skin. When figs of human effort produced religious strife, The Father tailored clothing for Adam and his wife.

16And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.

It’s there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees—knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying.

Over against all this cloudy vagueness stands the clear scriptural doctrine that God can be known in personal experience. A loving Personality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the garden and breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person is present, speaking, pleading, loving, working, and manifesting Himself whenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary to receive the manifestation.

Here in England there’s a glass wall between you and the taste of reality. I don’t want to see the last true passion tamed by railways, and men with Bibles telling everyone to cover their bodies.” He spread his powerful, elegant hands. “Play your string quintets, by all means, Mr. Narraway, but don’t silence the drums simply because you don’t understand them. The men who play violins have steel and gunpowder, and the men who play drums don’t.

Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible - the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thing brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Twice a year the octopus orchid flowered - then not an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see. The sent was very sweet and strong. I never went near it.

ISA51.3 For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.

Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?" "Oh, no! We can eat from any tree but the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." Woman explained. "But if we eat from that tree or even touch it, God will kill us!" That bastard! thought the snake and he spat, "Bullshit! This fruit will not kill you! God knows that if you eat from that tree you will open your eyes and become like gods and know the difference between good and evil!" Become like gods! Well, isn't that interesting... "Fuck God, eat all you want, learn all you can, write a goddamn encyclopedia, for Chrissake!" "Well," Woman thought, "It's a beautiful tree and the fruit looks delicious and who better to trust than a talking snake?" Abandoning all caution, she picked some forbidden fruit and shared it with Man. They each took a bite... Flash! Man, suddenly felt the cool breeze on his balls and looked frantically at Woman... She looked frantically at him... Holy Shit! We're buck fucking naked!

Pessimism is a towering skyscraper eighty stories high in the suburbs of the soul at the end of a long avenue with waste ground on either side and a few poorly-stocked little shops. Several ultra-fast staircases give access to the building, running up from the cellars to the roof-gardens. The comfort of this place leaves nothing to be desired and only the greatest luxury is acceptable, but every Friday the residents gather on the ground floor to read from a bible bound in the skin of a blind man. The psalmic words they intone rise up through the pipes, sigh in the stoves and sweep the chimneys coated inside with black grease which leaves dirt on the skin. Water runs constantly in the bathrooms and the showers beat down on the numbered bodies, peppering them with sand. On Sundays the bed linen unrolls by itself and nobody makes love. For this tower block, like an obscure phallus scraping the vulva of the sky, is usually a hive of sexual activity. The most beautiful woman lives there, but no-one has ever known her. It is said, that dressed in furs and feathers, she keeps herself shut away in a first-floor apartment as if in a white safe. Her windows are scissors which cut short both shadow and breath. Her name is AURORA.

Sin can be summed up as a "Declaration of Independence"—an attempt to do for ourselves what only God can do for us. What happened in the garden of Eden is duplicated millions of times daily, not only in the lives of unbelievers but in the lives of Christians also—Christians who use self-centered strategies to satisfy the deep thirst that is in their heart for God. Almost every spiritual or psychological problem has at its roots this condition—the person is failing in some way to let God satisfy his deep inner thirst.

Why weren't there any women in Jesus' gang?’ asked Winnifred. ‘Jesus' gang?’ echoed the vicar surprised. ‘Jesus never had a gang. Ah— you mean the Twelve.’ Winnifred nodded. The vicar looked perplexed. ‘Well, it wouldn't really have been appropriate, would it?’ ‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘It just wouldn't,’ replied the vicar, looking annoyed at my question. ‘But Jesus had a lot of girl friends,’ said Pearl. ‘He certainly didn't,’ replied the vicar, shocked. ‘But Vicar, what about Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus? The Bible says that Jesus loved them,’ insisted Pearl. ‘And then there was Mary Magdalene,’ I added. ‘She wanted to hug him in Joseph's garden when he had just come out of the tomb, but Jesus told her not to touch him.’ ‘Yes— well—’ said the vicar uncertainly. ‘They were good followers of Jesus and they loved him— as we should all love him. No more questions now. We will be starting the service shortly.’ ‘Not very helpful,’ I whispered to Winnifred. ‘If Jesus had had a few women in his group of twelve, it would be much easier to know how to live with them.

Human half-truth logic, dates back to Adam and Eve, when he tried to deceive God with a truth, 'we knew we were naked so we hid', leaving God to understand that something was wrong with Adam's logic, because if Adam knew THE TRUTH, he would know that you can't hide from God.

kingdom of heaven is like  a a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.

1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

The essence of this knowledge was the ability to `see all' and to `know all'. Was this not precisely the ability Adam and Eve acquired after eating the forbidden fruit, which grew on the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'? · Finally, just as Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden, so were the four First Men of the Popol Vuh deprived of their ability to `see far'. Thereafter `their eyes were covered and they could only see what was close ...' Both the Popol Vuh and Genesis therefore tell the story of mankind's fall from grace. In both cases, this state of grace was closely associated with knowledge, and the reader is left in no doubt that the knowledge in question was so remarkable that it conferred godlike powers on those who possessed it. The Bible, adopting a dark and muttering tone of voice, calls it `the knowledge of good and evil' and has nothing further to add. The Popol Vuh is much more informative. It tells us that the knowledge of the First Men consisted of the ability to see `things hidden in the distance', that they were astronomers who `examined the four corners, the four points of the arch of the sky', and that they were geographers who succeeded in measuring `the round face of the earth'. 7 Geography is about maps. In Part I we saw evidence suggesting that the cartographers of an as yet unidentified civilization might have mapped the planet with great thoroughness at an early date. Could the Popol Vuh be transmitting some garbled memory of that same civilization when it speaks nostalgically of the First Men and of the miraculous geographical knowledge they possessed? Geography is about maps, and astronomy is about stars. Very often the two disciplines go hand in hand because stars are essential for navigation on long sea-going voyages of discovery (and long sea-going voyages of discovery are essential for the production of accurate maps). Is it accidental that the First Men of the Popol Vuh were remembered not only for studying `the round face of the earth' but for their contemplation of `the arch of heaven'?

Former Director of Kew Gardens, Sir Ghillean Prance FRS, gives equally clear expression to his faith: ‘For many years I have believed that God is the great designer behind all nature… All my studies in science since then have confirmed my faith. I regard the Bible as my principal source of authority.

«I’ve never been to a funeral until today. I see dazzling arrangements of red, yellow, and purple flowers with long, green stems. I see a stained-glass window with a white dove, a yellow sun, a blue sky. I see a gold cross, standing tall, shiny, brilliant. And I see black. Black dresses. Black pants. Black shoes. Black bibles. Black is my favorite color. Jackson asked me about it one time. “Ava, why don’t you like pink? Or yellow? Or blue?” ”I love black,” I said. ”It suits me.” ”I suit you,” he said. I’m not so sure I love black anymore. And then, beyond the flowers, beneath the stained-glass window, beside the cross, I see the white casket. I see red, burning love disappear forever. As we pull away, my eyes stay glued to the casket. It’s proof that sometimes life does not go on. I look around. If tears could bring him back, there’d be enough to bring him back a hundred times. That’s not what I’m thinking. I’m thinking, I hate good-byes. It’s like I was a garden salad with a light vinaigrette, and Jackson was a platter of seafood Cajun pasta. Alone, we were good. Together, we were fantastic. Memories might keep him alive. But they might kill me.»

I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,         and  h they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;      i they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,         and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. 15     j I will plant them on their land,          k and they shall never again be uprooted         out of the land  l that I have given them,” says the LORD your God.

Each Sunday, as part of the service, Charles gave what was officially called an “Invitation to the Life of the Congregation.” This was a welcome to all who were in attendance and a listing of the events on deck for the week: gardening club, beach cleanup, Bible study, bake sale. Charles thought of it as the reminder that we are not alone. A public declaration of places to gather in and interests to share.

Christ is all in the entire work of salvation. Let me just take you back to the period before this world was made. There was a time when this great world, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all which now exist throughout the whole of the vast universe, lay in the mind of God, like unborn forests in an acorn cup. There was a time when the Great Creator lived alone, and yet he could foresee that he would make a world, and that men would be born to people it; and in that vast eternity a great scheme was devised, whereby he might save a fallen race. Do you know who devised it? God planned it from first to last. Neither Gabriel nor any of the holy angels had anything to do with it. I question whether they were even told how God might be just, and yet save the transgressors. God was all in the drawing up of the scheme, and Christ was all in carrying it out. There was a dark and doleful night! Jesus was in the garden, sweating great drops of blood, which fell to the ground; nobody then came to bear the load that had been laid upon him. An angel stood there to strengthen him, but not to bear the sentence. The cup was put into his hands, and Jesus said, "Father, must I drink it?" and his Father replied, "If thou dost not drink, sinners cannot be saved"; and he took the cup and drained it to its very dregs. No man helped him. And when he hung upon that accursed tree of Calvary, when his precious hands were pierced, when: "From his head, his hands, his feet, Sorrow and love flowed mingled down," there was nobody to help him. He was "all" in the work of salvation. And, my friends, if any of you shall be saved, it must be by Christ alone. There must be no patchwork; Christ did it all, and will not be helped in the matter. Christ will not allow you, as some say, to do what you can, and leave him to make up the rest. What can you do that is not sinful? Christ has done all for us; the work of redemption is all finished. Christ planned it all, and worked out all; and we, therefore, preach a full salvation through Jesus Christ.

In Genesis, the Bible's first book, woman is born from the body of man. The Fall from Eden represents the demise of hunter-gatherer life, the expulsion into agriculture and hard labor. It is blamed on Eve, of course, who bears the stigma of the Fall. 1' Quite an irony, in that domestication is the fear and refusal of nature and woman, while the Garden myth blames the chief victim of its scenario, in reality.

Ode to the Beloved’s Hips" Bells are they—shaped on the eighth day—silvered percussion in the morning—are the morning. Swing switch sway. Hold the day away a little longer, a little slower, a little easy. Call to me— I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock, I-I wanna rock right now—so to them I come—struck-dumb chime-blind, tolling with a throat full of Hosanna. How many hours bowed against this Infinity of Blessed Trinity? Communion of Pelvis, Sacrum, Femur. My mouth—terrible angel, ever-lasting novena, ecstatic devourer. O, the places I have laid them, knelt and scooped the amber—fast honey—from their openness— Ah Muzen Cab’s hidden Temple of Tulúm—licked smooth the sticky of her hip—heat-thrummed ossa coxae. Lambent slave to ilium and ischium—I never tire to shake this wild hive, split with thumb the sweet- dripped comb—hot hexagonal hole—dark diamond— to its nectar-dervished queen. Meanad tongue— come-drunk hum-tranced honey-puller—for her hips, I am—strummed-song and succubus. They are the sign: hip. And the cosign: a great book— the body’s Bible opened up to its Good News Gospel. Alleluias, Ave Marías, madre mías, ay yay yays, Ay Dios míos, and hip-hip-hooray. Cult of Coccyx. Culto de cadera. Oracle of Orgasm. Rorschach’s riddle: What do I see? Hips: Innominate bone. Wish bone. Orpheus bone. Transubstantiation bone—hips of bread, wine-whet thighs. Say the word and healed I shall be: Bone butterfly. Bone wings. Bone Ferris wheel. Bone basin bone throne bone lamp. Apparition in the bone grotto—6th mystery— slick rosary bead—Déme la gracia of a decade in this garden of carmine flower. Exile me to the enormous orchard of Alcinous—spiced fruit, laden-tree—Imparadise me. Because, God, I am guilty. I am sin-frenzied and full of teeth for pear upon apple upon fig. More than all that are your hips. They are a city. They are Kingdom— Troy, the hollowed horse, an army of desire— thirty soldiers in the belly, two in the mouth. Beloved, your hips are the war. At night your legs, love, are boulevards leading me beggared and hungry to your candy house, your baroque mansion. Even when I am late and the tables have been cleared, in the kitchen of your hips, let me eat cake. O, constellation of pelvic glide—every curve, a luster, a star. More infinite still, your hips are kosmic, are universe—galactic carousel of burning comets and Big Big Bangs. Millennium Falcon, let me be your Solo. O, hot planet, let me circumambulate. O, spiral galaxy, I am coming for your dark matter. Along las calles de tus muslos I wander— follow the parade of pulse like a drum line— descend into your Plaza del Toros— hands throbbing Miura bulls, dark Isleros. Your arched hips—ay, mi torera. Down the long corridor, your wet walls lead me like a traje de luces—all glitter, glowed. I am the animal born to rush your rich red muletas—each breath, each sigh, each groan, a hooked horn of want. My mouth at your inner thigh—here I must enter you—mi pobre Manolete—press and part you like a wound— make the crowd pounding in the grandstand of your iliac crest rise up in you and cheer.

No subordination pertains in the garden. The adam's service to the garden is rooted in his kinship with the ground. Marriage, according to the Yahwist, is founded on the kindship intimacy of partnership and companionship (2:24). Life in the garden is one of fruitful work, abundance, and intimate companionship. In the garden there is neither fear nor shame, even before God. These are 'lacks' that are meant to endure. But, alas, they do not.

Why would Yahweh give us Genesis 1 if the universe is really billions of years old and there were several pre-human species that lived and died on earth? Why not reveal what actually happened instead of telling us fables about gardens and talking snakes? I realize the Bible is not a science textbook, but it could have easily explained to us at least the basic tenets of biology without having to discover it all on our own many centuries later.

Have you heard the songs they sing here in Kilanga?” he asked. “They’re very worshipful. It’s a grand way to begin a church service, singing a Congolese hymn to the rainfall on the seed yams. It’s quite easy to move from there to the parable of the mustard seed. Many parts of the Bible make good sense here, if only you change a few words.” He laughed. “And a lot of whole chapters, sure, you just have to throw away.” “Well, it’s every bit God’s word, isn’t it?” Leah said. “God’s word, brought to you by a crew of romantic idealists in a harsh desert culture eons ago, followed by a chain of translators two thousand years long." Leah stared at him. “Darling, did you think God wrote it all down in the English of King James himself?” “No, I guess not.” “Think of all the duties that were perfectly obvious to Paul or Matthew in that old Arabian desert that are pure nonsense to us now. All that foot washing, for example. Was it really for God’s glory, or just to keep the sand out of the house?” Leah sat narrow-eyed in her chair, for once stumped for the correct answer. “Oh, and the camel. Was it a camel that could pass through the eye of a needle more easily than a rich man? Or a coarse piece of yarn? The Hebrew words are the same, but which one did they mean? If it’s a camel, the rich man might as well not even try. But if it’s the yarn, he might well succeed with a lot of effort, you see?” He leaned forward toward Leah with his hands on his knees. “Och, I shouldn’t be messing about with your thinking this way, with your father out in the garden. But I’ll tell you a secret. “When I want to take God at his word exactly, I take a peep out the window at His Creation. Because that, darling, He makes fresh for us every day, without a lot of dubious middle managers.

If the Nephilim were the offspring of demons and women, what if Satan’s intent was to pervert the human gene pool so that the Savior promised in the garden of Eden could never come?” It would have made the Flood merciful beyond dispute because God sending the Flood would have purified the gene pool and allowed for the redemption of humankind through Jesus. Mercy through judgment. A theme we see all throughout the Bible, just as we see how mercy can become a sort of punishment.

If anything is clear from reading Scripture, this fact is apparent: God speaks to His people. At the beginning of the Bible, we find Him speaking to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. He conversed with Abraham and the other patriarchs. He spoke to the judges, kings, and prophets. God was in Christ Jesus speaking to the disciples. God communicated with the early church, and as the biblical record comes to a close, God spoke to John on the Isle of Patmos. God speaks to His people, and you can anticipate that He will communicate with you, too.

JOH20.12 And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. JOH20.13 And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my LORD, and I know not where they have laid him. JOH20.14 And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. JOH20.15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him

must have been a book—way down there in the slush pile of manuscripts—that somehow slipped out of the final draft of the Bible. That would have been the chapter that dealt with how we’re supposed to recover from the criticism session in the Garden, and discover a sense that we’re still welcome on the planet. There are moments in Scripture when we hear that God delights in people, and I am incredulous. But they are few and far between. Perhaps cooler heads determined that too much welcome would make sissies out of us all, and chose instead accounts of the ever popular slaughter, exile, and shame.

The Rough Beast snorted. “You don’t get it at all, buddy. It’s not about wrestling. It’s about stories. We’re storytellers.” Caperton studied him. “Somebody at my job just said that.” “It’s true! You have to be able to tell the story to get people on board for anything. A soft drink, a suck sesh, elective surgery, gardening, even your thing--public space? I prefer private space, but that’s cool. Anyway, nobody cares about anything if there isn’t a story attached. Ask the team that wrote the Bible. Ask Vincent Allan Poe.” “But doesn’t it seem kind of creepy?” Caperton said. “All of us just going around calling ourselves storytellers?” The Rough Beast shrugged. “Well, you can be negative. That’s the easy way out.

My personal life is as monotonous as ever; but they have given me permission to walk in the garden, where there are almost seventeen trees ! This is a great happiness for me. Moreover, I am given a candle in the evenings—that's my second piece of luck. The third will be mine if you answer as soon as possible, and send me the next number of the 0. Z. I am in the same position as a country subscriber, and await each number as a great event, like some landed proprietor dying of boredom in the provinces. Will you send me some historical works ? That would be splendid. But best of all would be the Bible (both Testaments). I need one. Should it prove possible, send it in a French translation. But if you could add as well a Slav edition, it would be the height of bliss. Of

The thing is that this month I have been working in the olive groves, because their Christs in the Garden, with nothing really observed, have gotten on my nerves. Of course with me there is no question of doing anything from the Bible - and I have written to Bernard and Gauguin too that I considered that our duty is thinking, not dreaming, so that when looking at their work I was astonished at their letting themselves go like that. For Bernard has sent me photos of his canvases. The trouble with them is that they are a sort of dream or nightmare - that they are erudite enough - you can see that it is someone who is gone on the primitives - but frankly the English Pre-Raphaelites did it much better, and then again Puvis and Delacroix, much more healthily than the Pre-Raphaelite

Someone has described a drinking fountain in Germany, where, every morning or noon, the villagers throng to enjoy the flowing water as it pours through numerous statues, the figures representing all the forms of human life. The farmer drinks from the fountain adorned with figures of waving grain, from which are traced the words, "I am the bread of life" (John 6:35). The shepherd comes up and drinks from the outstretched hands of a shepherd holding a lamb in his bosom, and exclaims, "I am the good shepherd" (John 10:11). The traveler sees a guide holding a lamp in his hand, as he cries, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12). The gardener drinks from a fountain where the waters seem to be crushed from the clusters of the grapes that hang above it in the stone, almost hiding the letters, "I am the true vine" (John 15:1).

After Standard Oil Company founder John D. Rockefeller became the richest man in the world, he offered gardening advice to a group of young men at a Brown University Bible study. He told his admiring audience, “The American Beauty Rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.” Rockefeller's audacious winner-take-all metaphor about the American Beauty rose was a description of how Standard Oil had bested its competitors. The clumsy reference to God at the end of the remarks was a meager attempt to morally sanction the ideas of philosopher Herbert Spencer, who had recently seduced the robber baron community by adapting scientific ideas like “survival of the fittest” into a loose form of Social Darwinism that defined Gilded Age business.

Later on, however, I actually did read an unabridged Bible and researched more verses using online topical Bible resources, only to find out that Stanton might have been right. The Bible definitely left room for the relegation of women’s status in all respects. Women appeared to have been held accountable for every sinful act that’s committed because of a single woman who lived in the Garden of Eden, hence appearing to make them required to be silent in church. Women were supposed to be mothers and wives, which are noble pursuits, but it appeared as if men had a wider range of opportunities: they could be fathers and husbands… along with apostles, pastors, political leaders, polyglots, AND leaders of municipal congregations! The pursuits other than being a father and husband were considered to be noble pursuits for men, but if a woman pursued any of that, even if she had the capabilities and the good intentions, it would be considered blasphemous, at least from what I understood

hear some o’ them preachers, you’d think as a man must be doing nothing all’s life but shutting’s eyes and looking what’s agoing on inside him. I know a man must have the love o’ God in his soul, and the Bible’s God’s word. But what does the Bible say? Why, it says as God put his sperrit into the workman as built the tabernacle, to make him do all the carved work and things as wanted a nice hand. And this is my way o’ looking at it: there’s the sperrit o’ God in all things and all times — weekday as well as Sunday — and i’ the great works and inventions, and i’ the figuring and the mechanics. And God helps us with our headpieces and our hands as well as with our souls; and if a man does bits o’ jobs out o’ working hours — builds a oven for ‘s wife to save her from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at his bit o’ garden and makes two potatoes grow istead o’ one, he’s doin’ more good, and he’s just as near to God, as if he was running after some preacher and a-praying and a-groaning.

At the beginning of history there was also a garden and a command. God put Adam and Eve in that garden, and they were told not to eat of the Tree. The direction was: “Obey me about the Tree, and you will live”—obey me and I’ll bless you. But they disobeyed. Now there is another garden, and a Second Adam, and another command. Jesus Christ has been sent by the Father to go to the cross, which is also a tree. To the first Adam he said, “Obey me about the Tree and I will bless you”—and Adam didn’t do it. But to the second Adam he says, “Obey me about the Tree and I will crush you”—and Jesus does. Jesus is the first and last person in history to be told that obedience would bring a curse. The Father is saying, essentially, “If you obey me, if you are faithful to me, I will forsake you, cast you off and send your soul into hell.” And yet Jesus obeyed. Even as he was dying, abandoned by his Father, he called him “My God”—words that in the Bible were covenant language, conveying intimacy. Even though he was being forsaken, Jesus was still obeying.

Which brings me back to Ecclesiastes, his search for happiness, and mine. I spoke in chapter 4 about my first meeting, as a student, with Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. As I was waiting to go in, one of his disciples told me the following story. A man had recently written to the Rebbe on something of these lines: ‘I need the Rebbe’s help. I am deeply depressed. I pray and find no comfort. I perform the commands but feel nothing. I find it hard to carry on.’ The Rebbe, so I was told, sent a compelling reply without writing a single word. He simply ringed the first word in every sentence of the letter: the word ‘I’. It was, he was hinting, the man’s self-preoccupation that was at the root of his depression. It was as if the Rebbe were saying, as Viktor Frankl used to say in the name of Kierkegaard, ‘The door to happiness opens outward.’23 It was this insight that helped me solve the riddle of Ecclesiastes. The word ‘I’ does not appear very often in the Hebrew Bible, but it dominates Ecclesiastes’ opening chapters. I enlarged my works: I built houses for myself, I planted vineyards for myself; I made gardens and parks for myself and I planted in them all kinds of fruit trees; I made ponds of water for myself from which to irrigate a forest of growing trees. I bought male and female slaves and I had homeborn slaves. Also I possessed flocks and herds larger than all who preceded me in Jerusalem. Also, I collected for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. (Ecclesiastes 2:4–8) Nowhere else in the Bible is the first-person singular used so relentlessly and repetitively. In the original Hebrew the effect is doubled because of the chiming of the verbal suffix and the pronoun: Baniti li, asiti li, kaniti li, ‘I built for myself, I made for myself, I bought for myself.’ The source of Ecclesiastes’ unhappiness is obvious and was spelled out many centuries later by the great sage Hillel: ‘If I am not for myself, who will be? But if I am only for myself, what am I?’24 Happiness in the Bible is not something we find in self-gratification. Hence the significance of the word simchah. I translated it earlier as ‘joy’, but really it has no precise translation into English, since all our emotion words refer to states of mind we can experience alone. Simchah is something we cannot experience alone. Simchah is joy shared.

My great-grandmother read people’s fortunes and aligned her gardens with the stars. This was always said before a long, dramatic pause. Nana never wanted to talk about her. If I said anything about astrology or being a Cancer, my grandmother would go move quick to hush me. I heard different stories about my great-grandmother, cautionary tales about what could happen if you leaned in hard on that intuition. I don’t know the full story, but I also know that she was a card reader in Waco, Texas, at a time when that was not done. She was considered crazy by a lot of people in town. That buckle on the Bible Belt can come down hard and leave a mark. But I’d stare in the mirror at my brown eyes and high cheekbones, convinced I was Native American. More than that, we Simpson girls, my mother included, all seemed a little witchy. A nicer word would be intuitive. We had a good sense of people from the get-go and we often knew what was going to happen before it happened. Sometimes we chalked it up to our faith that God would provide, sometimes to just paying attention. But often it felt like we knew what was destined to be. Everything that happened in my life just felt preordained. Still does.

must have been a book—way down there in the slush pile of manuscripts—that somehow slipped out of the final draft of the Bible. That would have been the chapter that dealt with how we’re supposed to recover from the criticism session in the Garden, and discover a sense that we’re still welcome on the planet. There are moments in Scripture when we hear that God delights in people, and I am incredulous. But they are few and far between. Perhaps cooler heads determined that too much welcome would make sissies out of us all, and chose instead accounts of the ever popular slaughter, exile, and shame. The welcome book would have taught us that power and signs of status can’t save us, that welcome—both offering and receiving—is our source of safety. Various chapters and verses of this book would remind us that we are wanted and even occasionally delighted in, despite the unfortunate truth that we are greedy-grabby, self-referential, indulgent, overly judgmental, and often hysterical. Somehow that book “went missing.” Or when the editorial board of bishops pored over the canonical lists from Jerusalem and Alexandria, they arbitrarily nixed the book that states unequivocally that you are wanted, even rejoiced in. We have to write that book ourselves.

I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. “Laughter,” I said, “is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?” I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly — my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives. I undertook great projects: I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made reservoirs to water groves of flourishing trees. I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers, and a harem as well—the delights of a man’s heart. I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun. —Ecclesiastes 2:1–11

For two millennia the church has focused on worshiping a Christ who saves, a Christ who forgives, a Christ who cleanses, a Christ who challenges us and changes us, a Christ who convicts us and converts us, and a Christ who is coming again. If, as the Apostles’ Creed tells us, Jesus Christ is coming again to judge the living and the dead (Acts 17:31; Rev. 19:11–21); and if those who repent of their sins and believe in Christ will live forever with God in his new creation (Mark 1:15; Acts 17:30; Rev. 21:7; 21:1–27) through the atoning work of Christ on the cross (Isa. 53:1–12; Rom. 5:1–21); and if those who are not born again (John 3:5) and do not believe in Christ (John 3:18) and do not turn from their sinful practices (1 John 3:4–10) will face eternal punishment and the just wrath of God in hell (John 3:36; 5:29); and if among those in the lake of fire excluded from the heavenly garden are the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars (Rev. 21:8, 27)—then determining what constitutes sexual immorality in God’s mind has everything to do with the storyline of Scripture. Is homosexual activity a sin that must be repented of, forsaken, and forgiven, or, given the right context and commitment, can we consider same-sex sexual intimacy a blessing worth celebrating and solemnizing?

Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden, a much more difficult garden, and whose obedience is imputed to us. Jesus is the true and better Abel who, though innocently slain, has blood now that cries out, not for our condemnation, but for acquittal. Jesus is the true and better Abraham who answered the call of God to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go out into the void not knowing wither he went to create a new people of God. Jesus is the true and better Jacob who wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserved, so we, like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us. Jesus is the true and better Joseph who, at the right hand of the king, forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them. Jesus is the true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant. Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer, who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends. Jesus is the true and better David whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves. Jesus is the true and better Esther who didn’t just risk leaving an earthly palace but lost the ultimate and heavenly one, who didn’t just risk his life, but gave his life to save his people. Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so that we could be brought in. The Bible’s really not about you—it’s about him.

We’ve been instructed to reject any trace of poetry, myth, hyperbole, or symbolism even when those literary forms are virtually shouting at us from the page via talking snakes and enchanted trees. That’s because there’s a curious but popular notion circulating around the church these days that says God would never stoop to using ancient genre categories to communicate. Speaking to ancient people using their own language, literary structures, and cosmological assumptions would be beneath God, it is said, for only our modern categories of science and history can convey the truth in any meaningful way. In addition to once again prioritizing modern, Western (and often uniquely American) concerns, this notion overlooks one of the most central themes of Scripture itself: God stoops. From walking with Adam and Eve through the garden of Eden, to traveling with the liberated Hebrew slaves in a pillar of cloud and fire, to slipping into flesh and eating, laughing, suffering, healing, weeping, and dying among us as part of humanity, the God of Scripture stoops and stoops and stoops and stoops. At the heart of the gospel message is the story of a God who stoops to the point of death on a cross. Dignified or not, believable or not, ours is a God perpetually on bended knee, doing everything it takes to convince stubborn and petulant children that they are seen and loved. It is no more beneath God to speak to us using poetry, proverb, letters, and legend than it is for a mother to read storybooks to her daughter at bedtime. This is who God is. This is what God does.

During the war, I was constantly afraid Chris would die. What made it worse was that he told me many times that he wanted to die on the battlefield. Let me refine that. He didn’t want to die, but if he had to die, then he couldn’t imagine anything better than dying on the battlefield. It was part of his sense of duty: dying on the battlefield would mean that he had been doing his utmost to protect others. There was no higher calling, and no higher proof of dedication, for Chris. So there was no sense fearing death in combat. It would be an honor. That idea hurt me. I knew my husband wasn’t reckless--far from it--but in war there is a very thin line between being brave and being foolish, and when Chris talked like that I worried the line might be crossed. I started going to church more during his first deployment, and eventually went to women’s Bible studies to learn more about the Bible. But fitting the idea of God and faith and service together was never easy. What should I pray for? My husband to live, certainly. But wasn’t that selfish? What if that wasn’t God’s will? I prayed Chris would make the right decision when it came time to reenlist or leave the Navy. I wanted him to leave, yet that wasn’t exactly what I prayed for. Yet I was disappointed when he reenlisted. Was I disappointed with God, or Chris? Had my prayers even been heard? If it was God’s plan that he reenlist, I should have been at peace with it. Yet I can’t say that I was. Right after he made his decision, I took a walk with a friend whose faith ran very deep. She knew the Bible much better than I did, and was far more active in the church. I cried to her. “I have to believe this is the best thing for our family,” I told her. “But I don’t know how it can be. I’m really struggling to accept it.” “It’s okay to be angry with God,” she told me. That caught me short. “I--I don’t think we’re supposed to be.” “Why not?” “Well…Jesus was never mad at God, and--“ “That’s wrong,” she said. “Don’t you remember in the temple with the money changers? Or in the garden before he was crucified, his doubts? Or on the cross? It’s okay to have those feelings.” We talked some more. “I do believe that if Chris dies,” I said finally, “God must be saying it’s still okay for our family, even if I don’t know how.” She teared up. “I’m in awe,” she confessed. “I don’t know if I could say that.

We could live forever, if we were willing to be stupid the whole time." "Surely you're not saying that God had to choose between long life and intelligence for human beings!" "It's there in your own Bible, Carlotta. Two trees — knowledge and life. You eat of the tree of knowledge, and you will surely die. You eat of the tree of life, and you remain a child in the garden forever, undying.

To write with truth, I’ve been known to slow dance my words over graves of buried prayers, to drink my words under the shadow of my grandfather’s whiskey bottles, to lift my words from under the gaze of my daddy’s gentle eyes. I’ve had to write from the seeding syllables of my gardens, from the ammunition of my ancestors’ battlegrounds, and from the misery of my families’ tattered Bibles. I’ve pulled stories from the soil of my homeplace, from the juice stains of freshly-picked blackberries, and from the bottom of my bare feet. I write with the barbed-wire nouns and plural verbs of my mistakes, with the cast iron consonants and silent sugary vowels of my mother’s kitchen. But in the end, the only thing that matters is that I write.

Visual reminders of creation and Eden could be found throughout this meeting point between heaven, earth and the world below. Carvings on the entry pillars, doors and walls depicted palm trees, sacred floral designs and cherubim (1Ki 6:29). These were all motifs from the garden, whose story had always factored into the theology of Israel.

No Scripture,” said Spurgeon, “is exhausted by a single explanation. The flowers of God’s garden bloom, not only double, but sevenfold; they are continually pouring forth fresh fragrance.

6 sn I will bless you. The blessing of creation is now carried forward to the patriarch. In the garden God blessed Adam and Eve; in that blessing he gave them (1) a fruitful place, (2) endowed them with fertility to multiply, and (3) made them rulers over creation. That was all ruined at the fall. Now God begins to build his covenant people; in Gen 12-22 he promises to give Abram (1) a land flowing with milk and honey, (2) a great nation without number, and (3) kingship.

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17†but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat [4] of it you shall surely die.

The old covenant which God had made with Israel depended upon man. The Ten Commandments said, “Don’t, don’t, don’t.” It depended upon the weak arm of the flesh, and as a result, it failed. This was not because there was anything wrong with the Ten Commandments or with the Law that God gave. The problem was with man. The same thing occurred in the Garden of Eden. Many people think that there was something wrong with the forbidden fruit or that the tree was something unusual. I think it was good fruit and just like any other. The problem was not the fruit on the tree but the pear (pair) on the ground! This New Covenant depends upon the power of the throne of God; it depends upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's Gods Eden, the fountain of youth, the water of Truth and yes it shall set thee free of this world-wide mental misery. It's a pleasure to me to introduce the God that sets you free, sets you high, air castles in the cosmos that make you fly. Make you cry cause you know your recognition of your unworthiness; God comforted me in my loneliness, it's redemption from rags to riches in Gods holiness. These riddles are self-explanatory, explaining the exploration of this planet from the beginning of His story. Open your eyes for God's the one that abides.

In a sense, Job must replay the original test of the garden of Eden, with the bar raised higher. Living in paradise, Adam and Eve faced a best-case scenario for trusting God, who asked so little of them and showered down blessings. In a living hell, Job faces the worst-case scenario: God asks so much, while curses rain down on him.

As "the man whom He had formed" had yet to consider himself separate from all that is, Eden can be considered a metaphorical state of being within each individual body. Mirroring the human heart, Eden is the source of four rivers. The four chambers of the heart "water the garden" of the human body granting each human being the opportunity to live in conscious awareness of the present moment. Existence within the Garden of Eden represents a timeless paradise of unified being. As the present moment is timeless, Eden is right here, right now.

Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness,         you who seek the LORD:     look to the rock from which you were hewn,         and to the quarry from which you were dug.     2 Look to Abraham your father         and to Sarah who bore you;     for  e he was but one when I called him,         that I might bless him and multiply him.     3 For the LORD  f comforts Zion;         he comforts all her waste places     and makes her wilderness like  g Eden,         her desert like  h the garden of the LORD;      i joy and gladness will be found in her,         thanksgiving and the voice of song.

An over-authoritarian church, paying no attention to experience, solves the problem by paving the garden with concrete. An over-experiential church solves the (real or imagined) problem of concrete (rigid and “judgmental” forms of faith) by letting anything and everything grow unchecked, sometimes labeling concrete as “law” and so celebrating any and every weed as “grace.