nothing is yet in its true form

I have now almost reached the end of my first year in college and thousands of memories are flowing through my mind about this year, and everything that has happened to bring me to where I am now. One memory that keeps sticking out in my mind is from last August when I said goodbye to my parents as they left to go back to Virginia after dropping me off in Arizona. I remember my mom crying, and at that moment, I must have been thinking, “Oh she always cries about everything.” However, I can now have a new understanding regarding that moment. Surely, God must regard our leaving Him with the same kind of brokenness, yet even greater.

I can picture God at the moment right after Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and I can see His brokenness. First, He comes down and calls for them, but they hide from them. Then He they tell Him that they did the one thing He asked them not to do. He knew the consequences for their actions in fact he warned them already saying, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die. (Genesis 2:17)” Things get so bad by this time God “was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. (Genesis 6:6)” This seems like a completely horrible time to be alive in, but even then, God was in control. Part of Eden remains in us to this day and we cannot escape the longing for our paradise.

Authors, philosophers, poets, musicians, and artists have spoke of this emptiness for as long as we have observed the world. One of my favorite authors G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “We are homesick in our own homes.” We know what it is like to be lonely in a crowd; we look for fulfillment, but are never satisfied. Philosophers might suggest that we are looking for utopia, paradise, the Garden, but we do not merely desire a geographic location. Rather it is what was in that place, or better put, who was in that place. Genesis 3:8 tells us that Adam and Eve were able to hear, “the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” God is the occupant of our lost paradise.

As I read over the Genesis accounts of man being cast out of the Garden, I see that God does not seem remorseful. In fact, God does not even say goodbye. I would propose however, that God does not say goodbye because He knows that eviction from Eden is not the end of all things. Moreover, if you want to see how much God hated being separated from us you need only look at the life of Jesus. John 10:11 tells us, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Sticking with the shepherd imagery Jesus asks, “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? (Matthew 18:12)” The answer is yes, yes he does.

Take heart in knowing that while goodbyes are the hardest part, they only make reuniting even better. For this reason, Calvin referred to the Fall of Man as the “Happy Fall.” If we had not been cast out of the Garden, we would never have witnessed the grace and mercy that was shown at the cross. If we were never lost, we could never experience the joy of being found again. That is the reason for all of our longing. If we had been cast out of our paradise without any chance of returning there, we would eventually forget the place altogether. But instead, we now live in a foreign land and our hearts will not be satisfied until we reach our home country after death. We may have lost our paradise, but through Christ we may return there once again.