It’s Spring: Time to Venture Into the Great Outdoors

by Alexei Laushkin

I was walking along the Bull Run-Occoquan Trail in Northern Virginia a few years back and all around me I was surrounded by miles and miles of bluebells and two themes stuck with me. In the height of spring there is a real and genuine renewal of creation.

Yes, it is still under the curse but there is a beauty and consistency that comes with spring. It is a poor foreshadow of new life, but it is glorious and delightful all the same. It makes you realize how we have underestimated the glory and beauty of Christ when we hardly can even appreciate the creation that was made for him and by him.

I came back from this joyous weekend and was struck by something else. We often think of the Garden of Eden story as man centered, which in many contexts is very appropriate. Here’s what I mean by that though. When we think of being in the garden with God we think about us and maybe we think about God but mostly we think about us. We try and grasp and grapple with what a state of perfection, a state free of sin must have been like. As well we should, but we are missing something truly awe inspiring about our Lord.

God planted the garden:

“When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up”for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground” then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed” (Genesis 2:5-8).

The Lord prepared a place for us to live and thrive. He prepared a garden and was its perfect care taker. He made us in his image and said here steward in my place. Take dominion. Rule as I would rule and let’s see what happens. The tragedy is that we’ve made a mess of it not by our industriousness or creativity but by our selfishness our inward bent. God banished us from the garden and cursed the land.

And in our sin, we have tried to fill our hearts with the bounty of this earth and have left the creation burdened, groaning with us in our bondage to sin.

Thank God, Christ came. The Lord Jesus Christ who is sufficient to save. God has given us every blessing and spiritual gift in Christ Jesus. He is our sufficiency our righteousness.

If you want to be a good steward, look to Christ. If you want to tend creation, look to Christ for by the Spirit, the lusts and sins of our inner heart will be exposed. Sit at his feet let him teach you and show you a new His intention for all that he has made.