Toward Eden

If you go outside today and speak to the grass, flowers, trees and birds, you’ll discover that they aren’t too worried about Brexit. The rocks and dirt may seem untroubled by the 500 trillion dollars of notional derivative debts held by banks around the world. And I’m willing to bet nature won’t offer much discussion over the likelihood of major global warfare breaking out between the major military powers.

They will tell you of our Creator’s love and the blessings they offer to people who live from their hearts. And they’ll reassure you that they intend to stick around and keep offering those blessings until God is ready for the Final Redemption. Meanwhile, they beg us to manifest the moral character of God so that they can enjoy just a little preview of that ultimate revelation.

It’s not that those fallen human threats have no meaning, but that we cannot face them properly until we learn to listen to the unfallen rest of Creation. Mankind wastes an awful lot of effort and resources on things that don’t matter much. Should there be some awful cataclysm and massive death event, Creation will still be here as long as God wants. Granted, His Word says that humans won’t be exterminated before The End of all things, but nothing in His Word prevents things continuing for a lot longer than many Bible readers imagine.

Instead, His Word hints that what triggers Christ’s Return will be something too subtle for the world at large to notice. You can’t perceive it with fleshly senses or understand it with reason. Some significant portion of humans will rise up to seize the heritage of redemption in the here and now, and it has nothing to do with politics and material wealth. It’s the heritage of peace with Creation as a part of Creation. Peace with Creation hinges entirely on peace with God and vice versa. It’s all one thing.

Recall the teaching of the sensory heart. It’s a sensory organ in its own right, with a separate “brain” capable of processing what encounters that sensory field. Open your awareness to the heart; recenter your sense of soul there. In the Bible, the heart was not about emotions, but the seat of the will, the one part of us able to connect directly to God. It’s an entirely different faculty of awareness that we call “faith” and enables you to see the invisible moral truth woven into Creation. That’s the character and Presence of our God.

Sure, bad stuff is coming. Fallen people with no heart-sense at all have piled up death and destruction, blindly seeking what cannot satisfy. God has already unleashed His wrath on this generation of fools. The saints of God will tribulate, but we have the advantage of seeing things through the eyes of our hearts. We are held tightly by the promise of God that whatever happens will not hinder our mission and calling.

Use that sensory heart; get out and talk to Creation as often as you can spare the time for it. Make time for it. Chances are there will be precious few humans around you who share that gift, but even they will suffer as you do with a long way to go to make it work as God intended. Let’s pass through that Flaming Sword of revelation and repentance, the self-death of redemption by joining Jesus on the Cross, and let’s head back toward Eden. That’s what we are designed for in the first place.