ALPHA MAAMA (A.M.)

Tusite Sanuali 10, 2023 

THE Garden in Eden גן עדן

Ko e Ngoue ‘i ‘Iteni

GENESIS 2:8

AND THE LORD GOD PLANTED A GARDEN IN EDEN, IN THE EAST, AND THERE HE PUT THE MAN WHOM HE HAD FORMED.

SENESI 2:8

Pea na‘e tō ‘e Sihova ‘Elohimi ha ngouetapu ‘i ‘Īteni, ‘i hahake; pea ne tuku ai ‘a e tangata kuo ne ngaohi.

God is multivocational at creation. He is the world's maker, a soon-to-be matchmaker, Adam's surgeon, Eve's builder, and now Eden's gardener. Notice that Eden is not the garden, though we usually equate the two. The garden is in the broader region named Eden, which is located somewhere "in the east." A gan is a walled garden, a protected place, where flowers and fruits and vegetables grow. The Greek translation rendered gan as paradeisos-thus our word "Paradise."

In God's masterful shaping of events, after paradise is lost, it is regained when God takes up the vocation of gardening again. The same Lord who queried Adam, "Where are you?" (Gen. 3:9), asked Mary Magdalene, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?" (John 20:15). She supposed this man to be a gardener-and, oh, how right she was. The same Lord who planted a garden in Eden had now planted life in the soil above his vacated tomb. He'd come to cultivate the life of the Spirit within us, to cause us to bear abundant fruit, to feed us from the new tree of life, and-on our last day-to say to each of us, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43).

Plant your grace within our hearts, O Lord, that we might find all our delight in you.