"A New Season"

"Relationship" (Relational Love: part 6)

          For humanity life began in a garden: "The LORD God planted a garden in Eden...and he placed there the man whom he had formed...settled him in the garden" (Gen. 2:10,15). God had graciously created this sacred place of love, freedom, relationship, pristine beauty and fragrance for humanity and shared it with us. The garden was called "home"! God strolled there with Adam and Eve. This was God's original intention for us. However, sin had brought with it  terrible consequences, and one of these was the loss of our "garden home".

          Now Jesus, the New Adam, has fulfilled the prophetic promise, and has led us--has established us--in a new "heart land": "I will give you a new heart" (Ezek. 36:26). "The one who has come down from heaven" (John 3:13) has now come into my heart and made of it a new, sacred space: "I have come to my garden" (Songs 5:1). He has entered and has taken possession. He has made it a place of "springs": You shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails" (Is. 58:11). There he speaks to me, "I thirst" (John 19:28). This interior "garden" is to be always a consecrated, sacred place that must belong to him exclusively. "His glory and beauty are within [me], and he delights in dwelling there" ("Imitation of Christ". Cited in LH vol. 3, pp. 527-28).

          Now it is here in my garden heart that I must first seek for him: "When you seek me with all your heart, you will find me with you" (Jr. 29:13-14): "You will find what you seek within yourself...God will surely be within you" ("From a homily by Saint Gregory of Nyssa". Cited in LH vol. III, p. 414): "The Bridegroom, the New Adam, "has no other garden then the soul of his [beloved]. It is there that [I] must always look for him"; May it always be a "garden of the Spirit in which the living water of the Spirit flows" (The Cantata of Love. Blaise Arminjon, S.J., p. 272, 229). I am living a "new garden life" because "It is the Lord" (John 21:7) who now lives within me: "O garden dweller" (Songs 8:13) my most welcomed Guest!

Questions:

1)   What are some of my lifestyle choices that are helping me to protect my "garden heart" ?

2)   Am I truly experiencing a "new garden life"?

Scriptures:

Any scripture from the text; John 7:38; 2 Cor. 13:5