Sermon quotes on the garden of eden
Craig G. Bartholomew
What is clear on all accounts is that a garden was an enclosed area designed for cultivation… [so] what we have, then, rather than an image of primitivism, is one of an area that is bounded, probably by walls; carefully landscaped; intensively cultivated with orchards and the like. In the light of its urban connotations in the ancient Near East, Eden may well have included buildings. Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place Today (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011)
Mike Cosper
The garden itself was more than an agricultural project. It was a meeting place for God and man, where God “walked” among humanity (Gen. 3:8). It was the first temple, the first sacred space, set apart from creation for the intersection of heaven and earth.
Taken from Rhythms of Grace by Mike Cosper, © 2013, pp.29-30. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.
Rudolf Borchardt
God’s garden, made “in the beginning,” does not lie behind us, but ahead of us, in hope, and, in the meantime, all around us as our place of work. History without gardens would be a wasteland. What the human being shares with nature, what we demand from nature and entrust to nature, what we long for and reject, this may all become song and poetry, or music and philosophy, or myth and religion; but in the visible world it must sooner or later become a garden, if it desires to make itself visible at all; and the achievement of visibility – as distinct from simple thinkability, and understandability – is its most irresistible drive, as an inherent part, like all the creative drives of the human race, of the one primordial drive to give birth to structure.
The Passionate Gardener (Kingston, NY: McPherson, 2006), 32.
Annie F. Downs
I think when we go looking for fun what we are actually looking for is home. We are looking for peace. We are looking for simplicity, something to fill that spot that has been left by growing up or growing out or moving on. While we think we want fun, what we really want is Eden.
J.R.R. Tolkien
We all long for Eden, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human, is still soaked with the sense of exile.
Norman Wirzba
The Garden of Eden , literally the “garden of delight,” is humanity’s original and perpetually originating home, the place of our collective nourishment, inspiration, instruction, and hope.
Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, Cambridge University Press, 2012.