20 And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them .
22 And the LORD God said , Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat , and live for ever:
23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken .
24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way , to keep the way of the tree of life.
Devotional:
Human attempts to regain paradise are noble, yet futile.
Those who believe that human life began in a cave, with a brute of a man and a maiden, think of paradise as the height of progress. Progress advances us from the cave to the castle, from poverty to paradise.
Those who believe human life started in God's garden tend to teach that the improvement of life requires a return to the beginning. They continually call people back to God, back to the Bible, back to the faith of the past.
Both groups have the same noble desire for improvement. Both are dissatisfied with our present predicament and are determined to discover or recover the goodness of our golden age.
Without God we cannot aspire to goodness. Therefore those who pin their hopes merely on technology and good intentions will never see paradise.
But the road to the future is more than a return to the past. Human history is more than a child's game that is finished when the sun sets. God entered our time through Jesus Christ, the Lord of history. Human inventions are divine gifts, and they will be decorations in God's coming kingdom. When the last fruit of Golgotha is harvested and the resurrection is complete, nothing will be wasted and all will be purified.
When God is finished with us, we'll have much more than paradise.
