Adam and Eden.

This morning I didn’t go to church, so I just spent some quiet time with God.
Then I started playing the keyboard and I was singing this song, Eden, by Phil Wickham.

So I started thinking about Adam, and that song from Adam’s point of view..

 

“I remember how you’d call my name, and I would meet you at the Garden gate; how the glory of your love would shine.. I want it like it was back then, I want to be in Eden.”

Do you know that I love history channel shows that are not religious but are about the Bible? I really do, because things make more sense to me when they take an hour to explain five sentences, contextually and culturally. So when I was at home, I watched this show about Cain & Abel. You know, the sons of Adam & Eve.

In the show, the brought up questions like:
-Did Cain understand what he had done? Did he comprehend or grasp the idea of death?
-How did Cain know how to kill Abel? They suggested that Satan himself came to Cain and instructed him how to finish off Abel.
but the questions they raised that have stuck with me the most were the questions about Eve and Adam. How did they cope with this? Knowing that they were the ones who got themselves kicked out of the Garden, did they realize the correlation between the two? Did they feel guilty? How they come to understand the finality of death on earth?

I wrote in my journal once about how painful the parting of mankind from the Garden must have been on the Lord. There’s not much written about it, except that in his mercy God clothed man and sent him on his way to never return, to begin the real Exodus we are still a part of, the journey back to Perfection. That moment, that departure, is something I wonder about painfully. Did Adam and Eve weep and cry out the entire journey? Did they longingly look back and repent and fall on their knees? Was God watching longingly with a broken heart, knowing the cost required to get them – to get US – back?

So I like to pretend that at the moment Cain killed Abel and the weight of it fell on Adam, as a father and as a child of God, that he sang this song out to God. I want to pretend that was the moment Adam really felt the distance between Heaven and Earth, that he wanted nothing more than to stroll with the Lord and share with him and receive from the Father and be amazed by Him.

When I had finished playing this song, I don’t know maybe eight times {sorry people in neighboring apartments!} I started playing Heaven Song, because it seems like reflecting on our Exodus out of Eden should only be followed by anticipating the Promised Land.

 

“I want to run on greener pastures
I want to dance on higher hills
I want to drink from sweeter waters
in the misty morning chill
and my soul is getting restless for the place where I belong
I can’t wait to join the angels and sing my Heaven Song.”

Eden
Phil Wickham

Heaven Song
Phil Wickham