By: Lauren Thomas
I’m reading a book right now, just something fiction, but it involves the discovery of a secret garden. And no, I’m not talking about the classic by Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden. The idea of a secret garden is one that has been used repeatedly in stories, film, and books. We love the idea of the tantalizing secret, the delicious discovery, and the magic inside. Someday, I’m determined to have a secret garden of my own. The more I dream about this secret garden, the more I have wondered why the desire is deeply seated within me. There’s symbolism in this niggling feeling that all would be right on the other side of the garden wall.
I think it has to do with Eden. It has to do with the paradise-perfect garden that God made. It has to do with longing for what was. Somewhere in our DNA, we must remember. We know in our very bones there’s something better than the way things are here. If only we could just find that garden from which we were banished (see Genesis 3:23-24). If only we could get back to the garden.
In Burnett’s book, The Secret Garden, there is so much more to the story than an ivy-covered wall, or corroded skeleton key, or the garden on the other side. It’s also about a little girl with a heart of stone, in whom the garden does the miracle of giving a heart of flesh. It’s about a little boy, crippled in body and spirit, who is restored to wholeness. It’s about grief that is finally laid to rest and family reunited.
Does any of that sound familiar?
Heaven.
In Revelation, the description of the New Heaven and Earth is reminiscent of a garden (see Revelation 21:1-22:5). Some even call it a “garden city.” It’s the Recreated Eden we will one day gain entrance to through Jesus Christ. In that garden, the broken is restored, the dead is resurrected, the fractured is united. All is made well in that peaceful and serene and beautiful and breathtaking garden. There, the magic is God dwelling in its midst.
Some spend their whole lives searching for this secret garden and they don’t even know it. They spend their lives digging in the soil, hoping to find some ornate skeleton key that will unlock what they seek. Some never find it, failing to understand what it is they are looking for.
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There is a key. There is a door. There is a way. Jesus.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:6 ESV
Reflection:
How have you searched for “a secret garden” in your life? How have you observed others’ searching?
What do you most long for about the garden that is the New Heaven and Earth?
How is Jesus the key? How is he more than the key?
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