Daily Reading
Eden Awaits Our Return
January 5, 2025
We long for adventure, to be caught up in something larger than ourselves, a drama of heroic proportions. This isn’t just a need for continual excitement, it’s part of our design. Few of us ever sense that our talents are being used to their fullest; our creative abilities are rarely given wings in this life. When Revelation 3 speaks of us being “pillars in the temple of our God,” it doesn’t mean architecture. Rather, Christ promises that we shall be actively fulfilling our total design in the adventures of the new kingdom.
Act IV—which is the renewed heavens and earth, the new creation, the return to Eden—is the continuation of the Story that was interrupted by the Fall. God made the earth and entrusted it to us, to bring order, increase beauty, to explore, create, and unlock potential. We were to be his regents, reigning with his blessing and authority. That arrangement was corrupted by the Fall so that the earth no longer responds to our leadership as it once did. When Christ accomplished our redemption, he didn’t do it to place us on the bench for eternity. He restored us to put us back in the game. He even subjected the earth to a time of futility until the day it will be “liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). There is the assurance once again of our precious earth being restored, and Eden returning. We will then co-reign with Christ. “St. Peter for a few seconds walked on the water,” Lewis reminds us, “and the day will come when there will be a re-made universe, infinitely obedient to the will of glorified and obedient men, when we can do all things, when we shall be those gods that we are described as being in Scripture.”
Part of the adventure will be to explore the wonders of the new heaven and earth, the most breathtaking of which will be God himself. We will have all eternity to explore the mysteries of God, and not just explore, but celebrate and share with one another. Here is a remarkable thing to consider: Your soul has a unique shape that fits God. We are not all the same, but unique creations each of us. Therefore, as MacDonald says,
Act IV—which is the renewed heavens and earth, the new creation, the return to Eden—is the continuation of the Story that was interrupted by the Fall. God made the earth and entrusted it to us, to bring order, increase beauty, to explore, create, and unlock potential. We were to be his regents, reigning with his blessing and authority. That arrangement was corrupted by the Fall so that the earth no longer responds to our leadership as it once did. When Christ accomplished our redemption, he didn’t do it to place us on the bench for eternity. He restored us to put us back in the game. He even subjected the earth to a time of futility until the day it will be “liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). There is the assurance once again of our precious earth being restored, and Eden returning. We will then co-reign with Christ. “St. Peter for a few seconds walked on the water,” Lewis reminds us, “and the day will come when there will be a re-made universe, infinitely obedient to the will of glorified and obedient men, when we can do all things, when we shall be those gods that we are described as being in Scripture.”
Part of the adventure will be to explore the wonders of the new heaven and earth, the most breathtaking of which will be God himself. We will have all eternity to explore the mysteries of God, and not just explore, but celebrate and share with one another. Here is a remarkable thing to consider: Your soul has a unique shape that fits God. We are not all the same, but unique creations each of us. Therefore, as MacDonald says,
Every one of us is something that the other is not, and therefore knows something—it may be without knowing that he knows it—which no one else knows: and ... it is everyone’s business, as one of the kingdom of light and inheritor in it all, to give his portion to the rest.
—Unspoken Sermons