The Amazing Meaning of Life
"It took God six days to create the Heavens and the Earth, and Monty Python just 90 minutes to mess it up." ~ anon
The year was 1983. With an eruption of comedic foolishness the Monty Python troupe created a cult film - The Meaning of Life. Somehow in the making of this film the meaning of life eluded its producers, and therefore all who saw it.
Preceding Monty Python's efforts of discovery by a mere four years was Douglas Adam's humorous science fiction book - A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Through this guide the reader discovered 42 is the meaning of life. Make of that as you may.
Life's meaning is not found in a pointless number, but from a very brief review of the Bible's (and the world's) two most important gardens - Eden and Gethsemane. The first without pain, the other saturated in it.
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.” (Genesis 2:15-17)
Genesis 2 records that God placed an already breathing adult Adam into Eden.
Eden was bright, warm, peaceful and perfectly comfortable. The sun shone. And, God gave Adam a choice - it was a divinely appointed possibility. His best decision to make and his only rule to obey:
should I eat from the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, or not?
We all too live his choice now, each day.
Adam's faithlessness was revealed with a blinding speed.
The only way Adam could learn the goodness of what he had was to lose it.
Faithfulness is only possible when unfaithfulness is available.
Adam lived in untouched health. He knew no spiritual, physical or relational pain - not even shame.
Adam also did not know how to celebrate, for he had not tasted suffering and then its release.
The Bible cleverly paints an opposite to Eden, in contrast this is a garden of pain and not of pleasure, it was no paradise. Gethsemane also contained an opposite result.
In pain paradise is restored, but in pleasure paradise is lost.
Turning to Gethsemane ... all well-being has been robbed and your best mates are asleep on the job. There is not even cold-comfort, there is no comfort at all. Consumed in the whelming terrors of your darkest of nights, you know you weren't placed there by God - you chose to be there with Him, and still pursue Him - unlike Adam. You know how to praise but you can't, you just can't; yet your devotion neither falls or fails. The soul feels as black as the hour, it weeps in real blood. Yet, in this garden too Adam's choice remains - to flee the blackest of immediate futures, or walk in faithfulness despite its horrors, and head straight to the unseen dawn. You know this night is not just for yourself, it never was.
Faithfulness carries its own rewards.
Adam's choice was made in a wonderful, warm light. Jesus' choice was made in a terrible, distressing and lifeless darkness. Jesus' choice was faithfulness, Adam's wasn't. Jesus was alone, Adam wasn't.
This wrenching darkness held no power over the Lord. Suffering precedes a harvest of righteousness, as indulgence precedes a harvest of wickedness.
Adam did not know what Jesus knew. He was yet to learn.
Jesus knelt in Gethsemane and wept bitterly in His soul-tearing torment. Adam did not know such fearful emotions. Jesus knew the increasing torture immediately to fall upon Him, Adam only had warning.
Jesus lived faithfulness in the darkness, Adam lived unfaithfulness in the light.
If I have learned how to kneel in the rain and remain devoted in the darkness how much greater will my celebration be when when the darkness flees, the pleading has ceased and the bright sunshine returned?
Adam could not know how to praise God, but you can.
Adam did not know how to praise God, but you do.
You already know how to celebrate.
From Adam's very first breath mankind has been created to celebrate and to worship God.
Today's Soul Snippet:
'All misery calls sin mother.' ~ George Swinnock
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