In the Heart of Eden

God did not create me from the beginning to live in fear, guilt or chaos. He created me out of love. He formed me with tenderness and breathed His life into me. My heart was His garden – a place of beauty, order, peace and life. It was there that He wanted to dwell with me every day.

Eden becomes for me the image of my inner life. It is in the heart that decisions, desires and words are born. From the heart grow the fruits of my life. When my heart abides with God, it bears the fruits of the Spirit: love, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness and faithfulness. This is what a garden tended by the best Gardener looks like.

At the centre of the garden grew the Tree of Life. Today I see it as an inexhaustible spring, like a tap from which living water constantly flows. God never turned it off. It was I who, by turning away from Him through sin, turned away from that spring. It seemed to me that the tap had been turned off, but in truth my heart had simply stopped drawing from the water of life. Yet the spring still flowed. It did not dry up, because its source is God Himself.

Temptation does not begin with evil. It begins with a question: "Did God really say?" So often I hear a similar voice: "Are you sure you have discerned this correctly? Is it really worth trusting? Wouldn’t it be better to take another path?" And I begin to analyse, to doubt, to move away from the peace I had previously received. I see now that temptation very often does not take God from me at once – first it robs me of trust in Him.

When I let sin into my garden, I allowed increasing disorder to appear in it. What seemed innocent left deep consequences. Not because God wanted to punish me, but because every sin draws the heart away from the Source of life. Peace, joy and freedom begin to be lacking. Fear, chaos and burden appear.

It is then that I especially grasp the words of Psalm 51: "Create in me a clean heart, O God." I no longer ask only for forgiveness. I ask for a new heart. For a heart that will once again be God’s garden.

The story of Cain and Abel shows me that the struggle does not first take place outside, but within a person. Sin first knocks at the door of the heart. It is the same with me. Every day thoughts come that lead to life, and thoughts that lead to death. I can listen to the voice of accusation, fear and despair or to the voice of God, which leads to peace.

I have also realised that I can wound not only others but myself as well. Every word of contempt towards myself, every thought that robs me of hope is like a blow struck against my own heart. Yet God does not speak to me with a voice of accusation. He speaks like a Father who searches for his child: "Where are you?" Not because He has lost me, but because He wants to find me.

The greatest hope for me is that God has not ceased to be the Gardener of my heart. Even if the garden has been neglected, overgrown with thorns or seems destroyed, He does not leave. He takes up the tools of love, patience and mercy. Slowly He pulls out the weeds, tends the wounded places, waters what still lives. He knows that beneath the layer of pain there is still the soil He Himself made.

I am coming to understand more and more that holiness does not consist in never falling. It consists in returning to the Source after every fall. It is not my strength that restores life to the garden. It is God’s living water that makes even parched ground begin to bear fruit again.

That is why I want to choose life every day. I want to return to the Source before I start quenching my thirst elsewhere. I want to trust the first, gentle voice of God more than the later whispers of fear. I want to allow my heart to be a place where God feels at home.

Because I already know that He never stopped believing in me. It was sometimes I who stopped believing that my garden could still blossom. And He reminds me every day that the Tree of Life still stands at the centre of my heart, and that the spring of His grace never runs dry. All it takes is to come and draw.