Why?
Why does there have to be loss and suffering?
Why is there poverty, homelessness, and hunger?
Why are we afflicted with pain and disability?
Why are people abused, thrown away, or neglected?
Why are some people born with such all encompassing limitations and special needs?
Why isn’t life fair?
There are no easy answers……
but if you believe the Bible is God’s authentic Word, God reveals an all encompassing answer:
We are living between two trees.
The Garden of Eden contained many delights but two of the most intriguing things mentioned were:
1. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil AND 2. The Tree of Life
Genesis- the book of beginnings, is not a fairytale or fable but it is God’s revelation of history to us. Without this revelation, we would wonder why we are in this sorry mess we called life. Its random accidents and miseries make absolutely no sense. Contrary to what my son Joshua’s college biology teacher told them the first day of class, – We ARE more than electrical impluses and random chance. There is the Master Designer who holds all things together by His power and through His Word, reveals the “Big Picture” throughout the context of our human history. (if you haven’t seen Louie Giglio explain how Jesus holds us together by lamenin- prepare to have your mind blown and your spirit blessed)
Eve, then Adam, disobeyed God. They ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and death entered an otherwise perfect world.
From that millisecond on, their DNA began to degenerate. Immediately, nothing could be as fully alive as it was once created to be.
The Law of Entropy became the norm:
everything started going from order- to disorder, from beautiful perfection, to a shadow of original perfection and beauty, from innocence to corruption, from fully alive to decaying with time, from holiness to corruptness, from abundance to shortage, from masterpiece to ruined canvas, from image of God to shadow without substance, from wholeness to brokenness, from filled to languishing, from the very image of God- to shadow.
Aren’t you glad that God, in His great mercy, guarded the Tree of Life and banished Adam and Eve so that they would not partake of its fruit? What if they had? Their sinful, fallen, decaying, unregenerate state would have become their eternal state- our eternal state!
Instead- God planned- from the beginning- to
REDEEM,
RESTORE,
and RE-ESTABLISH
His creation’s glory.
If we don’t understand the beginning, we barely survive the hard times the living between the trees.
If we haven’t read the promise of the ending, we have no hope while living between the trees.
[Tweet “The Tree of Life is in our ancestral past and The Tree of Life is in our forever future.”]
But it gets better than that!!!! He doesn’t tell us what we lost and what we might gain. He doesn’t point us in the direction and say,” Have a good life- see you at the finish line.” No!!
He promises to live with us between the trees!
The Bible tells us an almost unbelievable story. A perfect creation- beautiful harmony- with the caveat of “free will”. And even though our choosing propelled us into the “shadowlands” God has a redemption plan and a love that never ends.
He didn’t throw us away and start over. He didn’t leave us to figure it out on our own.
He is the Good Shepherd, not content with having 99% of His flock- He seeks to find and gather the last one. He’s the Extravagant Father who stands with arms open wide, waiting, searching, hoping His child will come home again. He’s the King who left His kingdom, the God who demanded nothing from us to get right with Him again. Instead, He laid down His life to buy us back from the shadowlands and show us how to become God’s children. Jesus came to teach us to pray- “Our Father.” He came to reveal His love and take us home.
He will live with us between the trees.
He will take us through this life: He will help us with every problem, all of our suffering, disability, limitation, brokenness, illness, trial, challenge, pain, and death. He will hold us, sustain us, protect us, transform us, and finally glorify us.
He will take us through this life of WHY’S and carry us safely home!
We will get a new body, a new heart, a new mind, a new soul- transformed by the resurrection power of the Great I Am!
If we could just grasp- understand- perceive-truly see with an eternal perspective,
much of our pain would be comforted… many of our questions satisfied.
Enjoy this Josh Wilson song- BEFORE THE MORNING!