Paradise restored

My wife and I went to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks yesterday. We saw beautiful trees surrounding green meadows full of wild flowers with a backdrop of majestic snowcapped mountains. We saw geysers shooting up against a bluebird colored sky. We saw eagles soaring and beautiful waterfalls and crystal clear streams and pure blue lakes. We saw herds of antelope, elk, and bison. We saw a laughable looking coyote make a half-hearted and fruitless attempt at chasing down some trumpeter swans that looked upon him more with contempt than fear and flapped their big wings at him and shrieked to high heaven until he bounced away with his tail tucked between his legs.

Seeing it all made me think about how it was in the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, and how I wish all of earth was still just like that. Just as I began to feel down because the Garden of Eden has been closed down due to sin, I thought of heaven and eternity and how a place far better than these gorgeous national parks or even the Garden of Eden is being prepared for us by our heavenly Father right now.

The Bible states that in the beginning when God finished His creation, He looked at it and “saw that it was good”. I could hear His words echoing in my brain yesterday as I admired His marvelous handiwork. Indeed I thought, “It is good”. We saw a huge area of the park that had been ravaged by fire. I remember seeing that fire on the news several years ago and hearing ecologists predicting that the park was finished. Well it is not finished. Those areas are naturally being reforested and returning to their former glory and wildlife is filling it up again as if undeterred by the flames.

How comparable is the situation of satan who is using sin that is similar to a raging wildfire burning and destroying everything in sight, (and along the way destroying the idyllic setting in the Garden of Eden). But just like God is doing in restoring these beautiful forests, God is preparing a far and away better Garden, and this one will endure forever. He also is prepared and desires to restore each and every one of our lives. All we need do is ask for His forgiveness of our sins, and accept the sacrifice that His Son made on the cross on our behalf.

Please accept His kind offer and become a child of Christ today and live in peace in beautiful paradise with all of God’s children forever. Ask Him to come into your heart wherever you are. Don’t waste a single day or minute, won’t you?

John 14:
Peace I leave with you. My
peace I give to you; not as the world
gives do I give to you. Let not your
heart be troubled, neither let it be
afraid.