Dark Was the Night, Brighter Is the Dawn

                                                                                    

"In a semblance of the gardener 
God walked again in the garden, 

in the cool not of the evening 
but the dawn." 

-GK Chesterton 

There's a beautiful passage in Scripture that speaks of God "walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Genesis 3:8 ESV). It seems so ordinary and simple, like taking a walk around the block after dinner in the cool after a hot summer day. God walked in the garden. I imagine that some days, man and woman walked with Him. 

I wonder what God and the people talked about on their walks. Perhaps they had the sort of silent conversation that can sometimes occur in the company of dear friends. Or God might have only listened as Adam and Eve remarked on just how wonderful the garden was. Everything I think is, of course, just speculation, but it's interesting to dream about. 

I love going on walks with people. My girlfriend lives on five acres of woods, and we love to  take long walks, down the hills and by the creek. The sun bursts through the branches with such unspeakable elegance, and in those moments I am bathed in the soft waters of contentment. The creek babbles away, sliding over itself with persistent peace, and the squirrels burst with frenzied energy through the crackling carpet of leaves. I cannot be discontented when I am there at that creek, sitting on a fallen log with a loved one, taking a few moments to do nothing but absorb the complexity and simplicity of creation. 

After Jesus rose from the dead, He took a while to walk around the garden where He had been buried. Gardens seem to have significance to God. In Genesis, man rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden. Before Jesus went to be crucified, He prayed to God for hours in the Garden of Gethsemane, and after Jesus had died, He rose from the dead in a garden. 

Gardens are places of life, and places of death, and places of death leading to life. Walking among the trees by the creek, I can see this saga unfolding before my very eyes. I can feel the frenetic scrabble for life and also the serenity of rest. 

God walked in the garden in the cool of the day, in the dusk of all goodness, as if to say goodbye before the garden was destroyed. 

Later, Jesus walks in a different garden, this time in the dawn, as if to greet the newly redeemed earth. 

Perhaps the night has passed, and, dark as it is, the day has come. Now we find ourselves in the grayness of the dawn, in which everything slowly becomes illuminated. 

Dark was the night, brighter is the dawn.