In an Ideal World
In an Ideal World
Genesis 3:8a
And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day …
This imagery of ‘God walking in the garden in the cool of the day’ has been to my spiritual wellbeing what those paintings of log cabins by a rushing brook under purple mountains have been to my home’s walls: a vision of what I want my life to be. When I see Edenic mountain-scapes like Albert Bierstadt’s Mount Corcoran or Sierra Nevada in California, I feel transported into the heart of nature, as if I just stepped through the world’s canvas and found myself on the other side, where lions lay down with lambs, and where God strolls with man in the cool of the evening. Often, I pray for some word, some sign of His presence, some sound of His footsteps nearby, but nothing comes—or, if it does, my eyes and ears aren’t tuned to it.
Yet I’m certain of this: God has placed this yearning within our souls, friend; He’s given us this hunger for beauty, this insatiable thirst for fellowship with Him, and one day, when the panorama is complete, we’ll see that His vision for our lives far exceeded those paintings on our walls.