We will talk about the world we live in, the story of humanity and the relationship we have with God.
Our story begins not when time and space were formed but a long way before that. Before the Earth and all the beautiful galaxies were formed, before there was anything at all, at a time where only God existed, it was there and then that we existed in the mind of God.
Before stars ignited and the angels sang, God longed to create us. He wanted to be our father and partner. He would wait patiently looking for the day he’d breath life into us and we’d call Him father. You and I were beautiful thoughts to Him. Thoughts so moving he created time and space, the universe and all it’s wonders, guardian angels and all their powers, the Earth and a beautiful garden to place us in.
We aren’t any random thoughts to Him. He wanted to take his time and effort into creating us. And so He looked around and there was nothing as beautiful as He was and that’s exactly how He made us, creatures that look like Him. He shared his light and beauty, His essence and personality, His emotions and mind. He made us wonderfully and fearfully! God is free and does what He wills, and even that freedom he shared with us.
A beautiful creature deserves a beautiful garden to live in. And so he placed us in Eden, the finest garden in all of the universe. We flourished in that garden as male and female, naked but unashamed, among beasts but with dominion over them. In the garden, God placed two trees; The Tree of Life and The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. If anyone would eat from the tree of life, that person would life forever in their current state with God.
But the tree of knowledge of good and evil was different. The tree is no more tastier or beautiful than any other tree in the garden. It was an ordinary tree, but what wasn’t ordinary was what God commanded Adam and Eve of that tree. He commanded them to not eat from it. God loved them so much but He wanted to be loved back. And true love is only shown by the act of choice. No one forced Him to love us and so He never forced us to love Him back. Just as He freely chose to love us dearly, He wanted us to freely choose to love Him back.
But we didn’t choose Him back. We chose to love all things but Him. We disobeyed. The fruit did nothing more than may be provide Vitamin C but the act of disobedience, the intention to love what’s not good, caused death and evil within us. And God’s heart was broken. He chose us but we never chose Him back. But even that didn’t stop Him from loving us evermore. He would cloth us of our nakedness, not because it was shameful but because we thought it was. And he knew what must be done, He kicked us out of the garden as soon as possible. Not because he didn’t want us to live in a beautiful garden, but because the tree of life was there. And if we were to eat from that tree we would’ve lived broken forever.
And God in His betrayed state, still in love with us, planned of the most incredible thing to restore us to what He first saw in His thought. He saw two broken people that He so dearly loved and thought they were worth dying for to be restored. And that’s exactly what He does, He told Eve that even though the seed she ate killed her, the seed she’d conceive would save her.
Then all of history is about people choosing to love God or not but in both choices God was still faithful to us. He would always shine His light and love to both the saint and the sinner, He would guide and protect both the priest and the murderer. His love was never unfair. He would love all the same. History is then a repeating pattern of God choosing a person, hoping they’d choose Him back but He always ended up being betrayed over and over and over again.
But one day, as He promised Eve, a woman conceived a new seed. The seed that was to die and be buried so that it would become a tree, a tree that would be called The Tree of Life. And just like in the garden where if humans ate of the Tree of Life, they would live forever, this new Tree of Life did the same thing. This tree also had a name…it was Jesus.
God saw that humanity failed to uphold their end of the promise and so He decided that He’d become one of us and uphold the promise. God became human and dwelt among us but no one knew Him. But to those that knew Him and accepted Him for who He was, the person that breathed life into them and put them in the garden, for these people He would be the Tree of Life that they’d eat from by the simple act of believing in Him. These people would then live forever restored and perfected. The first tree would make you eternally imperfect, the new one would perfect you eternally.
The day we disobeyed God was the day we chose darkness, cause it was only God that was the bearer of Light. And anyone that disobeyed/sinned had darkness in Him. And so the wages of sin is death not for any other reason but because when we sin we share a piece of that darkness. And just as darkness can never exist in the face of light, a sinful person would perish in the face of God simply out of their nature.
And it is exactly that price Jesus paid for us. He took the darkness within us and became it so that He may die but we can live. So that He would perish in the face of light but we become part of it. And this is the greatest love story ever told; God became Human so that He would die instead of us for our sins. And so we can live with Him restored in paradise.
Now, everyone of us are faced again with similar options Adam and Eve had. But the commands have changed. It is not “Do not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil so you don’t die” but “Eat from the Tree of Life, so you may have everlasting life.” So it’s upto you now, choose your true love back or turn your back on Him again.