TALE OF TWO GARDENS

Did a forbidden fruit like this cause Adam and Eve's expulsion
from the garden? Or was it pride? (My pastel painting, 2014) 

What images come to mind at the mention of "garden"?

Petals in full bloom. A rainbow of colors. Fruit trees and palm trees and neatly trimmed hedges. A bubbling brook maybe. A veggie section definitely. Ah, glorious scents! Make mine lavender!

Indeed, who wouldn't want to spend infinity livin' la villa bella (beautiful life) in a garden? 

Adam and Eve and kids could have spent their forever in what could have been the coolest place on earth.

Genesis 2:8-9 "Now the Lord God had planted a garden...; and there He put the man He had formed... made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground―trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food."

Yet they blew it! The cost of their disobedience? Adam and Eve estranged from God and the perks that came along with it.

Sorry, Adam and Eve grandkids to the nth degree, we'd been bumped off from Eden.  

Let's visit another garden―Gethsemane.

Pastor Robert Hern (Victory Church San Diego) compared these two gardens in his recent preaching:

"The first garden symbolized man's failure to submit to God's will. The second Adam―Jesus―in the second garden, welcomed God's will and turned our defeat to victory."

Recalling Jesus' week "surging from victory (Palm Sunday) to a grief fest" at the garden of Gethsemane, Pastor Robert noted how Jesus and His disciples must have felt at home in that garden. It was their go-to place for prayers, fellowships and teach-ins. A cool place!

Yet that night, the garden turned gruesomely black.

Jesus bared His agonizing heart to His friends; then to His Father―about what awaited Him at the cross.  

As He prayed, his sweat turned to blood. Luke 22:44 "And being in agony, He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood..."

Doctors call it "hematidrosis", when blood vessels cause sweat glands to rupture due to emotional or physical distress―usually associated with man's fight or flight response to awful situations.

Jesus―Son of God who forsook heaven and became man―to save us, struggled with completing His mission? Indeed! Jesus felt it all―sorrow, joy, anger. And why not now when He knew the cross awaited Him?   

But it wasn't just the cross that haunted him. It was the prospect of all our sins and God's indignation being heaped upon Him!

Ultimately, obedience trumped sorrow. "Father, if you are willing, remove his cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done," Luke 22:42.

"...Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation," (Luke 22:46) He told His disciples whom he found sleeping afterwards.

But at this point, the battle had been won. Jesus would finish the fight in exchange for our salvation. 

There in the garden, at the crossroads of His reason for being, Jesus yielded to the perfect will of His heavenly Father.

The first garden ushered in man's break from God. The second assured us of salvation through the blood of Jesus.

It's really about choice, isn't it? Jesus chose to obey. So could we. And complete the race He's laid out for us.