Is the Garden of Eden a real place? While this is a very interesting question, I think what is even more interesting is that everyone seems to want to live there. While our Bible atlases may have difficulty pinpointing its precise geographical location, our spiritual GPS keeps telling us X marks the spot.

Why do we believe that the grass is greener on the other side? How is it possible to entertain visions of a walk in a Garden when we seem to spend all of our time clearing a path in the wilderness? We seem obsessed with the idea that the world should be a better place despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I would suggest that every time we cry for our mommy in the wilderness, we are really just longing for our Father in the Garden. The most powerful evidence for the existence of Paradise is the fact that we don’t live there, so every time we have utopian visions in a dystopian world we are tacitly acknowledging the coordinates of Eden.

The atheist has no choice but to tell us to grin and bear it because Eden is a mythical place, they think it’s waste of time smelling the Garden flowers when we should be concentrating on taming the wilderness weeds.  If, however, the Bible is correct then our shared contempt for the thorns and thistles, sweat and pain, is perfectly justified. We cannot, however, just spend our time complaining about the Call of the Wild, but must also heed the voice of one crying in the wilderness. We cannot just wander aimlessly in the forest of discontent but must prepare a path for the Master Gardner who will Round Up all of our thorns and thistles.

Since we all subconsciously acknowledge the reality of Eden, the real issue is not its existence but rather how we get there. The Good News is that God stepped into the wilderness and placed a cross on a hill to help us get our bearings. Sadly, we are usually so fixated on our aimless shuffling that we fail to look up. We complain so loudly about our inconvenient wilderness wandering being more than we can bear, that we fail to hear our suffering Savior whisper, “today you will be with Me in Paradise.”

So the next time someone tells you they don’t believe in Eden, ask them why they are constantly pining for Paradise.

Photo by Simon Matzinger on Unsplash