Eden Collective
Returning to God's Gardens
A Guided Garden Prayer Walk Experience
The Big Picture
Reuniting Heaven & Earth
God's Garden Prayer Walk
The gardens of the bible reveal the divine drama and how it plays out on the stages of heaven and earth. This is a story of lost love, a promise to revive that love, the pain endured to bring that love back, and the reward and joy of the one who paid for it all.
We will begin in a garden that leads to a fall…
Then, a mobile garden that led Israel through the wilderness…
Then, the anguish in a garden that leads to the cross and death…
Then, we will look at a garden that leads to the resurrection…
And finally, we will see a garden of marriage and eternal joy…
We invite you to enter the garden using this online website as a guide through the garden stations. These are marked out with wooden pallets and oil lamps on shepherd hooks.
God's Garden Journey Map
Friday 4 August, 2017
The Garden of Eden is a place of union, order and beauty
Garden of Delight
The Hebrew word eden is used elsewhere in the Bible to mean “bliss” or “delight.” For example, the phrase “the river of delights” in Psalm 36:9 is literally “the river of eden.” So, an alternative translation of “Garden of Eden” would be “Garden of Delight.”
God Made a Dwelling with Humans
The beginning of the biblical story is so fascinating: God didn’t create a temple for Himself. Instead, He planted a garden where He dwelled with humans.
Humans as Image Bearers of God
The garden was His temple. Humans had full access to God, and God had full access to humans. Here’s the remarkable thing. In Genesis, God declared that humans were His image. Instead of setting a statue in one specific place in the garden to symbolize his reign, He commissioned the living, breathing humans to be the figures that represented His rule. To be made in the image of God means we have been given God’s authority to reign and rule over creation, on His behalf.
The Mobile Garden is a place of silence, solitude and discernment
The Tabernacle as a Mobile Garden
Later on, in the biblical narrative, we find the Israelites wandering through the wilderness in pursuit of the promised land. On this journey, the Israelites carried with them the Ark of the Covenant, which represented God’s presence in their midst. When they settled in the wilderness, they built a mobile temple called the tabernacle, where they placed the Ark of Covenant in an area called the Holy of Holies.
Garden Imagery
What is fascinating is that all the embroidery and metalwork in the tabernacle depicted garden images. Entering the tabernacle was supposed to feel like entering a garden. The tabernacle was a symbolic recreation of the garden temple in Eden, where God and humanity once dwelled together. Though God had banished humans from His presence in the garden temple, He used the tabernacle to station that same divine presence right in the middle of Abraham’s family.
Pocket of Heaven
The tabernacle was truly a gift. God’s presence was not somewhere else, far away in the skies or in another land. No, now God would dwell among His people once more. They could build their lives around the rituals that connected them with God.
The tabernacle was just the beginning of God’s invasion of human space. It was a small, limited pocket of heaven on earth that symbolized God’s intention to fill the whole earth with His unlimited presence and glory.
The Garden of Gethsemane is a place of betrayal, surrender and prayer
Mount of Olives
The garden at Gethsemane, a place whose name literally means “olive press,” is located on a slope of the Mount of Olives. A garden of ancient olive trees stands there to this day. It is likely that Jesus frequently went to Gethsemane with His disciples to pray (John 18:2). The most famous events at Gethsemane occurred on the night before His crucifixion when Jesus was betrayed.
Betrayal
Now, few experiences can be more painful than betrayal. Many of us know this from our own experience. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus experiences betrayal. Peter denies him. Judas sells him out. His friends desert him. Because of these betrayals Jesus’ enemies capture him. From that moment, Jesus enters his passion and faithfully fulfills his calling as the Servant-King, who lays his life down for all.
The Garden Tomb is a place of renewal, resurrection and awakening
The return to the Garden of Eden reality is now within all in whom Christ dwells by the Holy Spirit. When Jesus was resurrected, every living organism or system of order was potentially resurrected from the curse of death to the fullness of God. However, the fullness of this completed resurrection and restoration of all things is an ever unfolding and frustrating process. It only awaits the overseers of the created world - mankind - to awaken to their true identity and become the matured sons and daughters of God they were intended to be. The battle for this reality is fierce, only because the people of God have been asleep to whom and what dwells in them and thereby who they really are. God is not calling us to grander sacrificial religious activity. He is calling each of us to seek Him with our whole heart.
So, in order to embrace the resurrection life, we need to learn how to die.
The Garden of God is a place of celebration, restoration and joy
“We cannot objectively be separate from God; we all walk in the Garden whether we know it or not. We came from God and we will return to God. Everything in-between is a school of intentional loving.
Authentic spiritual knowledge always has the character of re-understanding to it! It is returning to where we started and as T. S. Eliot says, “knowing the place for the first time". Or as Jacob put it when he awoke from his sleep: “Truly, Yahweh was always in this place all the time, and I never knew it” (Genesis 28:16). That is, without doubt, the common experience of mystics, saints, and all recovered sinners (which is the only kind of saint).”
- Richard Rohr
“With the kiss of the sun for pardon. And the song of the birds for joy. One is nearer to God's Heart in the garden than anywhere else on earth”
Anonymous
A Big Thank You
This garden walk experience was made possible by the faithful hard work of many people. A big thank you to Anicke, Kenny, Vanessa, Roxy, David, Zephania, Ella, Jenny, Will and Kobus for their dedication in completing this project.