The Garden

The cabin by the lake became our family’s happy place.  When I say family, I don’t just mean my parents and I but our church family.  My parents were part of a Sunday School class that modeled that of the early church in Acts.  They broke bread together.  They celebrated together.  They cried together.  But most importantly, they worshipped and studied the Word together.

There are many memories at the cabin by the lake.  I was the oldest kid of the bunch, so I courageously took the younger kids on the paddle boat.  The paddle boat got stuck on the edge of the “lake” - okay the “cabin by the lake” was really the “cabin by the pond.”  The younger kids, with safety vests up to their chins, were panicking.  How would we ever get unstuck?  The fathers were building a fire and the mothers were on the deck chatting.  Well, I did my best to save the day.  I got us unstuck but not without falling out of the boat face first into the lake.

Another memory is forgetting my gum for our ride up the mountain.  In my preteen (underdeveloped) brain, I decided that chewing gummy bears will help my popping years.  While it did at first, the once bear-shaped snack quickly became a fruity mush in my mouth.  My underdeveloped brain quickly rolled down the windows to spit out the mush.  It was a few minutes later that we pulled up to the cabin to find a neon splatter of once-gummy bears across the family van.

But one of the most memorable activities at the cabin on the lake was Bible charades.  Each family was tasked with acting out a Bible story for others to guess.  I was convinced that I would have my family go first and I picked a tough one that year.  I acted as Isaac and my parents were Jacob and Essau.  Don’t worry, we stomped the bunch.  The easiest one but the most hilarious, was our good friends Mr. Bill and Tammy.  They appears from the other side of a tree with leaves taped to their clothes.  They leaned against either side of the tree crunching apples.

While there was immediate recognition of the story by young and old, I think so often we lose sight of what’s going on there.  The Fall - the beginning of the need for the Savior.  The story that gives way to the rest of the Story.

But there are details of that story that repeat themselves so often, yet are lost in the history of the Garden of Eden.  Details that will be restored to wholeness in the New Garden.