The Perfect Garden

I've had a lot happen this past month...and I've had a lot of huge and constant blessings from God...and I've thought a lot about life, and death, and God...and His creation. This may take several entries to get through, but here goes ~ Installment #1 ~ In the Beginning...

I've been told by more than one suffering person, "If there were a God, He wouldn't allow suffering such as..." and they fill in the blank with the horrors being experienced by them or a loved one. And I have no doubt about the horrors! There are horrors going on around this globe called earth by the gazillions on a constant basis. Horrors that are too horrible to even contemplate. And these horrors affect good people. And they make good people sometimes do and say horrible things! And then there are horrors of a "smaller" nature, like love dying. Like my co-worker's mother dying suddenly and unexpectedly from a heart attack. Like the grief experienced by the lady who rides my bus every night and never fails to give me a sweet smile but who just miscarried her 9 week baby. Horrors like the pain of my dog dying last month from another horror called "cancer."

Death is horrible!
And we tend to lay it at God's door and blame Him.
Or deny Him.
Because of the pain.
"Where's the 'love' in pain," we ask?

Stuff like that used to make me wonder about this God who defines Himself as "Love." I don't wonder about it anymore. I prayed for insight on this subject, and if I may, here's the thought path that my loving heavenly Father led me down.

When God made the heavens and the earth, and the oceans and the sky, and everything in them, on them, above them and below them, He did it for only one purpose, that of nurturing us humans. He didn't make it for Himself, He made it for us.

Kind of like we do with our spaces. We go to great lengths to create beautiful backyards, or the perfect decor in our home. We agonize for weeks over what color to paint the walls of the living room, and will it go well with the furniture we've picked. And we don't do that so much for us, as we do it for "them." The "thems" that we will invite to share our lives. We wait anxiously for that moment when someone from our beloved group will enter our back yard and go, "Wow!" We hold our breath hoping for that gasp of delight as they enter the door of our home. We day-dream of the moments we will spend there with family or friends, sipping tea and chatting, eating Thanksgiving dinner, opening Christmas presents or blowing out birthday candles. We decorate for love.

God did to. He created a perfect universe, and then a perfect world, and then a most perfect garden, holding His breath in hopes of our gasp of delight. He wanted to make it perfect...and He did. He made it so perfect that there was no death or decay, no shed blood, no cellular degeneration. Do you know what that means? It means that nothing would ever die. The animals wouldn't die or get cancer, the people wouldn't hate and fight and kill, the animals wouldn't eat each other, the flowers wouldn't fade and die, the grass and leaves would endure forever because of, and through His infinite love. There was no death! Think about that for a moment. No death!

And then think about this absolute perfection. At each stage of His creation, He stepped back and surveyed His handiwork, and He pronounced it "Good!" Mind you, He wasn't gaging His success by our standards, but by His, which are infinitely more exacting than ours. Six times He stood back, surveyed what His hands had wrought and said, "It is good!" In fact, let's call it perfect.

And He made it just to share with us; so He could come walk with us in the cool of the evening and look at the fun things we had done with His garden. "Look, Father...I decided to move the honeysuckle vine over here where that spot of sunshine comes in while You are here, so it perfumes the area where we sit. Do you like it?"

Perfection.
Just for us.
Love.