Eden’s Design

via Pattern

Having a vivid imagination has it’s drawbacks. While I have imagined the Garden of Eden many times, it seems to shift and evolve each time into something indefinable.  In this way it is rather like heaven somewhere out there in the future, but the definitions are so vague it allows only expectation without perfect knowledge of the details. We can’t go back to Eden, God has secured it’s location. We have to vacate our current human housing to go to heaven, which scares us silly to think about.  What a dilemma.  Stuck in an imperfect world, with imperfect people, living imperfect lives.  Was this really the Creator’s design? No.

Tapestries are like that though.  From the backside of the tapestry one can see brightly colored threads woven in among the darker ones, colliding and cascading together in what seems on first observation to have no rhyme or reason.  It is only when looking face on to the front of the tapestry that we can understand the weaver’s intentions and design.  The pattern becomes strikingly obvious, and we have one of those “aha” moments.

I look back on the tapestry of my life so far, and I understand this only partially.  What seemed like chaos at times, living through the struggles, fears and insecurities of difficult days or events or circumstances, in one sense has order today in the view from the “other side.”  My life took on a pattern of God’s own design, weaving all those feelings, pains, struggles, joys, victories, and experiences into the person I am right this minute.  It was for His glory, not mine.  He is the Master Weaver.

Eden was the origination point for the human experience, according to the Bible.  Yet, man’s struggle with staying in the boundaries of the design, and the simple demands of the Creator, resulted in being cast into a world filled with chaos.  Even in this event God would show grace and mercy, and point to a pattern far into the future, when He would go to extravagant lengths to save the people who would trust Him.  In examining heaven’s description in Revelation, we see a look back at the design pattern for Eden.

The Master Weaver also has designs for your life you may not even recognize or know of today.  The chaos surrounding you may be deafening, or so painful you wonder if you will even come out the other side.  It’s a moment or a series of moments that every person faces at some time in their life, when they have to choose between believing there is some design, or hopelessly resigning to believe there is only chaos.  At these times it’s best if we stop and try to examine not the chaos side, but the other side of the tapestry of our lives to find the meaning of what has happened in the past.  If the Master Weaver can help us see the design so far… it becomes easier to believe there is pattern and purpose going forward. It helps us trust the Weaver to weave into our life what is best for us.

Paul says it this way in Ephesians 3:20-21…

Now to Him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us–to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.