Garden of Eden

I live in the woods. If I walk into my yard, no matter which way I turn I’m surrounded by towering trees, shrubs and so many other types of plant life that I can’t identify or describe them all. I find a deep and great peace from living in this environment. It’s the same kind of peace I find when I simply am. There’s something so right about just being. Something calm, something soothing, something that feels as if this is the way life is supposed to be.

I find that peace in many places because it is something that lives deep inside me. It’s a contentment that’s just there no matter where I am. But the peace I find in the woods, or the mountains or the ocean, takes that peace deeper, makes it richer, fuller.

I wonder if that peace was experienced by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? What would it have been like to live there?

An internet image search on the Garden of Eden turns up a wide variety of pictures, some painted, some actual pictures of places. Somehow I doubt that any picture does justice to what the Garden of Eden really was.

It was there that God placed the first people, there that he made the first family, provided the first home. It was there that God made and placed the family in exactly the environment He wanted them.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden…and there he put the man whom he had formed. Genesis 2:8

When I was a kid I used to wonder if I lived in the place I was supposed to live. Sometimes I wondered if I had the family I was supposed to have. As I got older, even as an adult, I used to think I was born into the wrong time, that I should have lived in the 1800’s. There was just something about that time period that made me feel as if I would have fit in better then than I did in the time I was born into. Eventually I realized that I was born exactly when and where the Lord wanted me to be born. He placed me in the family He wanted me to have, put me in the area He wanted me to live in, planted me in the time period He wanted me to be in. But for a long time I had those kinds of thoughts.

I don’t imagine Adam or Eve would ever have had need to think those things. Not only were they placed where they were but they had God to talk to, to tell them that they were in the home He created just for them.

But…what was it like in the Garden of Eden? Scripture tells us….

9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. Genesis 2:9-14

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. Genesis 3:8

I grew up hearing Bible stories. I heard about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, heard how perfect the garden was. From the stories I was told, Eden was nothing short of heaven on earth. Was it? Scripture doesn’t seem to say. It would seem that the temperature was either very mild or warm because Adam and Eve wore no clothes until after they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil but there’s no reference to that except in Genesis 3:8 where it said …in the garden in the cool of the day… But how cool was cool? There’s a cool part of the day when the temperature reaches over 100 degrees and a cool part of the day when they stay below freezing.

To this day…in my mind…when I think of the Garden of Eden, I think of perfection. Of temperature that stays constantly comfortable, of animals that don’t bite, of insects that don’t sting. Of days where there was nothing to do but walk through the garden and pluck the food you wanted to eat off vines and trees that grew abundantly. But that image is the result of having been taught time and again the story of Eden being heaven on earth.

I know now that it wasn’t. Temptation was there. Sin was there. Evil was there.

But as I look over my woods, see the trees, the bushes and vines, the lake, the creeks, the animals…I can’t help but wonder, while I hear nothing but the sound of nature, was that what Eden was like?

And if it was…

It comes very close to being heaven on earth, simply because there is nothing but the peace of creation surrounding you. When I stand in the woods, I have around me everything I need to survive. My modern mind may not know how to do it…which foods are edible, which ones are poisonous, which ones make medicine…but they are there if I just knew how to use them.

We have berries growing in our woods right now. They’re there for the picking. But we had to find them before we could pick them, we had to know that they were edible to be able to enjoy them. I remember well the joy I felt at first discovering a patch of wild blackberries. They weren’t in our woods but in town. I stumbled on them by accident. That discovery made me happy. I don’t happen to like blackberries but finding them was pure joy. I knew my children loved them and that I was going to be able to give them a treat when they discovered what I’d found. We’ve since found many more blackberry vines, have found other berries too. It doesn’t seem to matter how many berries we pick, or what kind they are, it is a joy to pick them. To enjoy the taste of them fresh off the vine. To know that they were provided by the Lord for our enjoyment. There’s a pleasure in that that doesn’t come from anything bought at the grocery store. I never felt that kind of pleasure when growing something in a garden either.

It’s the joy of knowing the Lord provided that food and its simply there for the finding.

I find that same joy in just walking through our woods, in sitting and looking at them. They’re there, provided by the Lord, for our enjoyment, for our pleasure, for our survival, for our peace of mind and Spirit.

Was that what if felt like in the Garden of Eden?