This is the story of Marvelous Mark and Precious Virginia. No, we did not assume those names ourselves. These are the names we gave to each other. This is the story of two people living life in the South.
We have named our place, “Life Between Two Gardens”. That name is quite descriptive on a couple of levels. To begin with, we literally live between two gardens. The garden in the back and the garden in the front. If you ask me why I garden, I would tell you it is what I do. My parents gardened. All of my grandparents gardened. I cannot envision not gardening.
There is a deeper, more spiritual level as well. Precious Virgina and Marvelous Mark are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. We believe that God has revealed a bit of himself to us in a book. This book is commonly referred to as the Bible. I find it interesting that this book begins and ends in a garden.
The story begins in Genesis. God placed Adam and Eve in a garden. In the first chapter of the Bible he states.
Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
The story picks up in the second chapter.
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
A river watering the garden flowed from Eden...
The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Things do not go well in the third chapter. That one commandment about the tree of knowledge of good and evil was violated. This violation, commonly referred to as the fall of man, had major implications on all areas of life. Relations between God and man were severed. There was enmity between Adam and Eve that had not been there before. And even the earth was affected, including the Garden of Eden.
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
But fortunately, we are not left to our own devices, trying to desperately attempt to reclaim some sort of cheap imitation of that original garden. If that were the end of the story, my gardens would be continual reminders of what we have lost. I still have crop failures, horn worms, droughts, windstorms, and the normal day to day failures that come from living in a fallen world. But that is not the end of the story. Not for mankind and not for a heavenly garden. Not only are Adam and Eve cursed, but their is another curse pronounced on the one who caused them to sin. Within this curse we catch a glimpse of hope for Adam and Eve.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
Even here, in the third chapter of the Bible, we find an allusion to the one to come. The one who would crush Satan’s head, whose heel Satan will strike. Think about that imagery the next time you think about Easter. Here is the first glimpse that God reveals of his plans for Jesus Christ. The rest of the book is in many ways how God takes us back to a garden. But I fear that description pales in comparing the original Eden to the new Heaven and the new Earth that God promises in the book of Revelation. Stick around. Things are going to get better. Oh so much better!
The story ends in the twenty second chapter of the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible. Here are some of the last words given to man by God.
“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”
It seems that within every person is a God-placed longing to return to that garden, whether they are able to grasp it or not. It is my hope that each person reading this will seek that garden.
It is our desire to share a little of what is going on in our two gardens and maybe a little of what is going on with us in between those two gardens. I hope you will indulge us as we share a little of our walk in between the two gardens God tells us about in the Bible, as well. After all, those are the gardens that really matter.
