Return to the Garden

There was order in the Garden. Everyone had an assignment. Work was part of the creation story. Adam was to tend the garden, with Eve’s help of course. The ground wasn’t cursed so work was a joy. Imagine that! Joy at work. The word joy is not often associated with work. But with no sin in the picture - or anxiety over deadlines or HR issues constantly surfacing - life was good. Very good, in fact. Unfortunately, in our current disposition far too often we attach…

All 41 workers who were trapped in a collapsed Himalayan tunnel for 17 days were successfully rescued last week. The men were tunneling through a mountain as part of the $1.5 billion Char Dham highway project, which aims to connect four Hindu pilgrimage sites, when a landslide trapped them nearly 3 miles from freedom. The workers were provided oxygen, food, and water through a narrow pipe, even as rescue efforts faced numerous setbacks. After the complete breakdown of…

My dad loved being outdoors in God’s creation camping, fishing, and rock-hunting. He also enjoyed working in his yard and garden. But it took lots of work! He spent hours pruning, hoeing, planting seeds or flowers, pulling weeds, mowing the lawn, and watering the yard and garden. The results were worth it—a landscaped lawn, tasty tomatoes, and beautiful peace roses. Every year he pruned the roses close to the ground, and every year they grew back—filling…

So, we bit the fruit . . . then what? We were thrust into a world at war. Paradise was lost. But not forever. Genesis 3: 21-24 describes it in this way: “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. 22 Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—' 23 therefore the Lord God…

We all—men and women—were created in the image of God. Fearfully and wonderfully made, fashioned as living icons of the bravest, wisest, most stunning Person who ever lived. Those who have ever seen him fell to their knees without even thinking about it, as you find yourself breathless before the Grand Canyon or the Alps or the sea at dawn. That glory was shared with us; we were, in Chesterton’s phrase, “statues of God walking about in a Garden,;…

I wondered early in my walk with God - was there a wedding in the Garden of Eden? Then it occurred to me, of course there was. After all Eve came from Adam. They were one before they weren’t. That sounds like a Yogi Berra quote. But it’s true. Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Gen 2:18 (ESV) 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took…

Can you believe it? Here we go 2023. We just want to thank all of our friends and allies for being a part of our ministry in 2022 and beyond. It's a privilege to bring the message of healing to a broken world through teaching, writing, podcasting, blogging, video, and face-to-face one-on-one. We love what we do, and do it for the glory of God. Happy new year to all as we pray a blessing over 2023 for each of you. Steve and Colleen

Back to the drama in the Garden of Eden. Remember now, God gave us this story of the first marriage to help us get our bearings. It provides some very essential categories for navigating our marriages—like how gender is so fundamental to our identity, and how we were made for Paradise. How mankind fell and what that Fall did to our lives as men and women. And it also makes something else absolutely and utterly clear—we have an enemy. Now there’s a thought.…

God has a beauty to unveil. There's a reason that a man is captivated by a woman. Eve is the crown of creation. If you follow the Genesis narrative carefully, you'll see that each new stage of creation is better than the one before. First, all is formless, empty and dark. God begins to fashion the raw materials, like an artist working with a rough sketch or a lump of clay. Light and dark, land and sea, earth and sky—it's beginning to take shape. With a,…