Author: Christine Wyrtzen

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.  Genesis 2:16-17  ESV

I remember my first encounter with death as a child.  My grandmother died when I was 13.  One minute she was there, the next minute, she was gone.  The kitchen was quiet, and when we walked in the door, the aromas of her Swedish baking were absent.  Her two Siamese cats no longer greeted us.  The change from her existing to not existing was a physical and emotional ‘thud’ to my gut.

I felt this shift again when my mother died.  I was thirty.  Yes, I knew she was dying; she had terminal cancer.  But even as she grew weaker, the understanding of death could not be fully digested.  I could still bring her flowers, make her coffee, sit on the edge of her bed and talk with her.  But one day while visiting, she breathed her last and I looked death in the face.  The shift was swift and radical.  One moment she was with me.  The next, she was not. She would no longer stand at the kitchen window when I drove in. Her laundry, washed with a detergent made of her favorite soap shavings, wouldn’t be hanging on the line.  One can never quite prepare for death’s finality.

I don’t know if Adam knew what death meant when God warned him and set the only parameter he would have to follow.  He could enjoy everything God made and partake of it but there was one tree that was forbidden.  Should he disobey, there would be instant spiritual death and a progressive physical death.         

Adam and Eve set a disastrous course in motion when they disobeyed.  Initially, the shift they felt was a spiritual one.  There was no more transparency without shame, no longer the anticipation of fellowship with God.  In a moment, the shadows of distrust, fear, embarrassment, and perhaps even anger, visited their souls.  Innocence was history.

Every person born encounters a moment when the spiritual death of Adam makes itself known in a way that is defining.  It is that moment when innocence dies.  You are probably sifting through your memories to remember the exact moment it happened to you, that instant when your view of life changed forever.  For any who grew up in the best of homes, the awareness of spiritual death was more subtle, but over time, just as devastating.  Bullying at school, competition between siblings, angry words spoken by a parent for which there was hopefully an apology; these series of events reveal an imperfect world and bring the gnawing feeling that no one is completely safe and perfectly loved.

The overarching plotline of the Bible is that mankind fell ~ then God sent a redeemer so that mankind could be saved from his sin.  With that rescue, the full restoration of Eden would begin to blossom in his spiritual life.  While we will all endure the gut-wrenching pangs of physical death, we know it’s temporary.  We will live in the Eden of a new Heaven and new Earth where corruption does not exist.  We will know what it is to be Adam and Eve in the land of perfection.  God is, at this moment, preparing it as He once did when His Spirit hovered over the face of a dead planet and kissed it to life. 

Oh, the things You are preparing for me, tailor-made, just right.  Amen

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.  Genesis 2:15  ESV

My mother was a gentle soul, understated, but with a great colorful and eccentric side if she was comfortable around you.  She loved gardening and loved good dirt.  When she visited us at our home in the Adirondack Mountains, she’d dig up soil to take home for her garden.  While this may not seem that eccentric, when she and my Dad traveled, she did not buy souvenirs per se but brought home dirt.  If you opened her top dresser drawer, you could see little baggies of dirt and twigs from Germany, England, and Bermuda.

She also loved to collect kindling from the woods outside our home.  It was stacked meticulously like matchsticks in our basement.  On Saturday mornings, she would pop into the kitchen after breakfast, rub her hands together and exclaim, “What shall I get into today?”  That meant she was headed outside to explore but would, inevitably, end up in her gardens.  I can remember overhearing her say to a garden snake, “Well, hello there Mr. Snake.”  (Our daughter Jaime was only four at the time, but this is one of her favorite memories.)I saw early that when a man or woman finds a divine purpose for their life, it is a beautiful thing.

Adam was created to find fulfillment in the labor his Creator gave him.  And he did, for a while.  He was told to do two things; work the garden and keep the garden.  To keep means to guard and protect.  But protect it from what, or whom?  Satan of course.  There were no other predators.  Only him, lurking, waiting for an opportunity to corrupt everything just as he was corrupted.  

My garden, my personal sphere of influence, was given to me by God.  I labor with Him, but I also protect it with Him. To labor without protecting is foolish, allowing the enemy to plunder recklessly.  Guarding it is one aspect of ‘ruling and subduing the earth’. 

At whatever point I abdicate and assume that God will protect it without my direct involvement will end badly. I live in a dangerous world and ruling my part of it is cooperative, just as it was for Jesus. As He was directed by His Father, He confronted the kingdom of darkness.  He informed them of their limits and parameters.  He even revealed that this was part of His mission. “I came to destroy the works of the evil one.” 

I do not want to be lazy; I was given kingdom work to do.  I don’t want to be passive either; I was told to protect what is holy.  Doing both to the glory of God is part of my personal mission statement.

While I work today, I will also be the watchman on the wall as You give me discernment.  Amen

So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.  Genesis 2:3  ESV

What happens when God blesses something?  The Hebrew concept from the word ‘bless’ is this ~ God ‘praises and gives strength to something and removes it from common use.’    

Could all of this be true about the Sabbath?  I think I’ve always believed that the seventh day of the week (my church day) is a day just like the other six except I choose to do different things.  It’s quieter and more restful.  I’m realizing that true teaching on the power of the original Sabbath is absent.

Since God blessed the Sabbath, made it holy, and infused strength into it, that changes the picture entirely.  When the seventh day begins, I need to take my shoes off at the burning bush.  The ordinary and the mundane promise to melt away if I immerse myself in profound sacredness. 

In the welcomed silence, God will do something physical, emotional, and spiritual to me.  As I rest, He will bless me with measures of strength that are supernatural.  He will engage in a deep impartation of restoration.  To the extent that I engage with Him in return, He will illumine things I thought I previously understood.  

The last element of the Sabbath is resting.  As He rested after creation, there was another time in history where it happened.  It was the moment Jesus said, “It is finished.”  The noise of evil against the Son of God had been on a sharp upward curve, resulting in a horrific crucifixion.  While it might have appeared that God had been murdered, “It is finished!” pierced the silence, and evil trembled.  The worst had happened for the fallen angels.  The curse had been reversed.  Death had been defeated.  Sin had been paid for. 

So, on my next Sabbath, I’m going to look for ‘holy’, opening my heart wide to the pregnant, sacred moments God is waiting to give to those who come expectantly.  No one can stand on holy ground without leaving changed! I can emerge with new vigor, with new spiritual energy and wisdom.

Prepare me.  Amen

And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.  Genesis 2:2 ESV

God finished what he set out to do. Then He rested, not because He was weary, but because He loved what He had created. When God begins anything, He completes it. He does not abandon a project because things are complicated. He is never set back by limits or because of inadequacy. While I may try my hand at things only to discover that something is too hard or even impossible, God never experiences these realities. 

I can rest in these wonderful truths as God works His purposes in me. Paul said, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Phil. 1:6. God will not fail. God will not retract one promise. God will not change His mind about me. I am His creation, and every single day, He is molding me with loving intentions.

Can I hasten or slow down His plans? This is where I must tread carefully. I can affect the speed of the outcome due to the free will God gave me. God’s original intention was for Adam and Eve to enjoy a life of perfection in the Garden of Eden, but they wrecked it with their choices. It appeared they ruined God’s plan, but God had foreseen this, provided a Lamb, and accomplished a way to restore Eden through the death of His Son. Jesus crushed the head of the serpent, the very devil who instigated the mutiny Adam and Eve committed in the Garden. Through His death, He made way for the redemption of them and the rest of their descendants.

I press in close to my Christ today and yield every part of my story. I give him the sins of my past and the times I worked against His purposes, knowingly and unknowingly. Though I feared I sabotaged my future blessing, I was wrong. With repentance and redemption, God continued to mold my life and keep me on the path to glory.

 
When I was created, God dreamed. When I was immature, God nurtured me. When beaten down by the enemy, God battled for me. And He is working today, completing every single thing pertaining to my life. In eternity, all of us will celebrate the victory of completion as we are unveiled bearing the perfect reflection of Jesus. 

I will not be anxious about my life.  You are the Potter.  In Jesus’ name, In Jesus’ name, Amen

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.  Genesis 2:18  ESV

Lest any woman should feel insignificant because of how the word ‘helper’ has been unwrapped in our past, let the Word speak for itself today.  The word for helper is ‘ezer’; one who provides aid or relief, one who imparts strength.  Adam was incomplete without a counterpart who completed him.  The word does not imply someone who is inferior.  A helper is not less valuable than the one who is helped.  How can we be sure of this?  Hold on.  Are you ready?

God describes Himself as a helper, an Ezer.  Here’s just one example.    “Hear O LORD, the voice of Judah and bring him in to his people.  With your hands contend for him, and be a help (Ezer) against his adversaries.”  Deut. 33:7  It is used another 21 times in the Old Testament.

Everything I have described thus far is a brief summation of the scholarship of a woman in ministry named, Carolyn Custis James.  She is an award-winning author who thinks deeply about what it means to be a woman who loves Jesus in a post-modern world. She champions men and women working together in a messy and complicated world. 

Carolyn so beautifully teaches that a woman is a helper to the man.  She is his partner spiritually, bringing him her strengths.  She completes him in what he lacks.  He completes her in what she lacks.  Man does not carve out his path void of her input.  He thrives on her feedback.  He knows that left alone, he will not walk the path God has laid out for him successfully unless he plugs in her gifts.  Where he is weak, she is strong, and vice versa.

Being an ‘Ezer’ is who I am as an image-bearer of God.  Just as God comes alongside to strengthen and nurture, I model after my Creator to bring my strengths to the table. God asks me to do it in a non-threatening way, never to intimidate but to support. 

In whatever ways Christian cultures have diminished a woman’s worth, heal our souls.  Lift our heads. In Jesus’ name, Amen

And God blessed them.  And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it…”  Genesis 1:28  ESV

Adam was told to subdue the earth, to rule and bring it under subjection to the laws of the Creator.  He was to take the principles of heaven, the ones God revealed to Adam as He walked with him in the garden, and then put them into effect here on the earth.

As created children of God, as people who walk and talk with God intimately, our mandate is the same.  We are to have the mind of Christ, to learn the ways of heaven intimately, then to bring those spiritual laws into effect in our world.  When we encounter obstacles, we are to put on our soldier’s uniforms and engage in the battle with the spoken Word and prayer.

I was surprised several years ago to discover that when God formed the church, the Greek word for church, ‘ekklesia’, was the word the people of Greece used for a legislative body.  They understood that the church was God’s corporate agent to bring the kingdom of heaven to the earth.

I have a garden to rule, a sphere of influence to affect.  When I use my conferred authority with humility in prayer, I bring God’s ways to my environment.  My world begins to bear the imprint of how things run in heaven.

Jesus, as the last Adam, showed us how to rule.  He never moved, traveled, healed, spoke – without asking His Father what to say or do next.  Isaiah 49 says that He would be born to speak the Word and His mouth would be a sword.  Talk about affecting your environment!

Adam, through sinning, abdicated his authority.  Jesus won it back on the cross and has, through the great commission, given it back to His disciples.  Today’s agenda is set before me ~ rule and subdue the earth.

I can’t pretend to know what to do unless I get on my knees and soak in the Word.  Fill me with Your message and set my feet to rule.  In Jesus’ name, Amen

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”  Genesis 1:26a  ESV

Man is made in the image of God.  Originally, he had full understanding of divine things.  There were no flaws or mistakes in his thinking.  He had intense desires to walk God’s path without a trace of misgiving.  He was able to see God, hear Him speak, and walk with Him in friendship in the cool evening hours.

Heaven and earth were in Adam.  He had a body made of earth and a soul made of heaven.  He was perfect.  Holy like his Creator.  He was communicative, creative, trustworthy, and a righteous administrator of all God asked him to govern.  He was the perfect husband, Eve the perfect wife.  But Adam and Eve will lose it all.  They will rebel and bear the guilt of creating mutiny against the God who gifted them with perfection. 

Mankind still groans under the burden of fallenness.  Creation is in mourning; weeping for what was lost.  People break under the sadness of the times, under the curse of sin that eats away at their psyche like cancer.  Even Christians are bending under the weight of it.  But can I ask?  Do we not know our future?

All is not lost.  Jesus came as the last Adam to redeem what was lost in the garden.  He died to give us the chance to, once again, be holy – as He is holy.  We are invited into a re-parenting process by His Father to be perfect image-bearers once again.  Daily, through our willingness to own what is flawed and then repent, God sets us apart from the curse of the fall to be like the last Adam.

And when we die, that full restoration will happen instantaneously.  We will be with God, walking in the cool in the evening.  We will know what it’s like, firsthand, to have divine thinking.  We will be in the prime of life, healthy and energized, to enjoy kingdom life to the fullest.

There are moments that are perfect here on earth, ones I’d like to freeze-frame.  When they are over, I can be depressed.  Those perfect moments, however, will not be interrupted in heaven.  We will all be glorified, living in the presence of God where color, creativity, and communion will exceed any perfection we have ever known here.  The kisses of heaven did not end in Eden.  They were simply paused.  God’s proximity and presence were restored again at Calvary.

How much I will bear Your image today is my choice.  Rule in me today.  Conquer sin and death.  Live in me as You did in Adam.  Amen

And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place…  Let the earth sprout vegetation…  Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens…”  And God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night…  And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth.  Genesis 1:9-17  ESV

I think of the homes we have purchased over the years.  When we toured each of them with a realtor, we either liked a feature or disliked it, according to what would be ideal for certain members of the family.  When we saw our first kitchen, it was large and with an island, and immediately we knew it would accommodate the cooking I like to do.  Now, years later, there are pictures to prove it.  Both of our kids, at different times, were perched on the island helping me make something.  A spatula in their hand and a smudged face revealed what they were licking.

This is what we do when we buy a home.  A certain bedroom will be ideal because it gets morning sun, or because it’s near the bathroom, or perhaps it’s large enough for a certain piece of furniture.  We picture our things, and our loved ones, in that space and think, “Yes, this was made for them!”        

God did the same with Earth.  He made it for us.  Before He created Adam, He held the Earth in His hands and mused what it would require to make this place home for those He loved.  He knew we’d need to breathe, that we’d need water to drink and saltwater suitable for the aquatic world.  We’d need nighttime for rest and daytime for work and pleasure.  Divine omniscience was the architect of it all and the One who then had the power to create everything He imagined.

When He was finished, He said, “This is good.”  Surely it resembled what we say when we make a place our home, paint the walls, re-arrange the space, move in our belongings, and then stand and behold it with satisfaction.  We realize that it’s just right. It’s just as we imagined it would be.

After the sixth day, God created mankind.  Ah, this was the point of it all in the first place. 

When my roses bloom, when I grill fish for dinner, when the warmth of the sun warms my world, I realize again how personal You are.  You made the earth and though we have polluted Your planet, You will touch it and make it new again one day.  Once again, just right for us, for eternity.  Amen

And God saw that the light was good.  And God separated the light from the darkness.  Genesis 1:4  ESV

God created and then He divided the light from the darkness.  This is how God worked to develop His creation.  Throughout Genesis, God will separate one thing from another to complete His intentions for creation.

In the spiritual, He does the same.  The Hebrew word for ‘separated’ means ‘set apart.’  He created a people, for Himself, and then separated them from other nations.

Is this not what God does for me and every other child He saves?  He created us for Himself and then separated us from the world.  We are different, we are His.  We are saved – not unsaved, believers – not unbelievers. 

The process of delivering me from sin and to set me apart will continue for the rest of my life.  The Word, bringing light, exposes evil.  When I see it or sense it, I feel a strong reaction.  I am repelled, even if I don’t understand all of it, and deal with it as God leads me.  I am usually led one of three ways.  I speak against it, pray about it, or walk away from it.

What are the rewards? If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. John 1:7. Those who have been called out of darkness, who savor the narrow way, have a fellowship that is so profound, it defies explaining it to someone who has never experienced it.  We are not separated into isolation – though it may initially feel like that as our conversion brings strong reactions from loved ones, even rejection.  We may lose family and friends, but we gain another family for eternity.  We are separated into a new fellowship, a kind that the world cannot offer. The Spirit, which unites us, dances between us and we feel the rhythm.   

I’m set apart and am not ashamed of the Gospel.  Amen

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.  Genesis 1:3  ESV

I am struck with a sense of wonder over a God who can say, “Let there be light.” and light appears.  Who can compare to Him?  Any of us can say, “Let there be light.” for the next twenty years but nothing will come of it. 

The God who can speak something and cause it to happen is driven by love and compassion.  Such omnipotence, restrained and released out of holiness, can be trusted.  If God were unloving, how frightening His power would be!  He could, if He wanted, end our lives with a breath.  Oh, but He holds us safely in His powerful hands.  King David said, “Your gentleness has made me great.” Psalm 18:35  

The light God created in Genesis was a physical light that illumined our planet.  But He is not limited to miracles only in the physical realm.  There is spiritual light too.  God declared that light would shine in the human heart so that a man or woman could see the glory of Jesus.  “For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”  2 Cor. 4:6   When God turns the light on, spiritual blindness is instantly cured.

“Let there be light” rolls off my tongue repeatedly in prayer.  I pray it in all kinds of circumstances. 

• When someone I care about has not yet trusted Jesus as their Savior, I ask God to declare over their darkened understanding, ‘Let there be light.’
• When I am faced with a tumultuous set of circumstances for which I have no clarity, I ask for God to bring all the pieces into the light for clarification and definition.
• When the sins of others are hidden, I ask God to let what is hidden be revealed, to turn the light on so truth can be seen.

God’s Word has so many stunning layers of application.  When God speaks, no one and no thing can minimize or nullify its effects.  May God declare light today in your world in whatever ways you need to see the shadows flee.  

The words You spoke that put the earth on its rotation in space are no more powerful than the words You speak over me through the power of Your Spirit.  I am humbled by Your investment.  Amen