Beyond Death #devotion

I had an ominous dream

time had passed before my eyes

a dark cloud swept over our earth

filled with dark corruption and lies

 

a storm charged with hate

no control how it spun

ripping apart all that inspired

where the final gate was  hung

 

inside was  preserved

only one small tiny world

open-faced smiling flowers

and one grey mourning dove

 

a brick path had been laid so long ago

and the arbor overgrown

shielded unique flowers

from the cold biting snow

 

frozen were the tears

that lay upon my cheek

as beauty was discarded

ripped apart so to speak

 

and now what is left

I can tell you what is not

today beauty died

the remaining world now LOST

“Time began in a garden.” and it will end there as well. I sometimes have imagined with my children what the garden of Eden must have been like. We all liked the idea of riding tigers, talking to the monkeys, and being lifted up in the trunk of an elephant. The part of the garden that was different from all gardens was the absence of SIN. That would mean the animals would have gotten along. Many claim that the lion laying down the lamb at the end of the Age. I was struck by a visual that I saw in an article written by a young Pakistan woman. She spoke of how life had been simple in her (impoverished) village but people looked after each other and they celebrated the good fortune of another. In the garden of life, people care for one another. She expressed her consternation at the change of the bigger village in just 50 years since the days when people would split their last loaf of bread with another. In this new society man throws a struggling survivor of a boat (in the sea) because their beliefs are not the same. Children are taught to wield blades bigger than themselves – their prey is man.

Truly our garden is dying.

Isaiah 12:3

“Therefore you will joyously draw water From the springs of salvation.”

Genesis 3:22-24“Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”– therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword which turned every direction to guard the way to the tree of life.”

Revelation 22:1-2

 “Then he showed me a river of the water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of its street On either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

Isaiah 11:6

“And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little boy will lead them. 7Also the cow and the bear will graze, Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like the ox.…”