Why must we age? Oh, for a bite from the tree of life!
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COLUMN: Food for Thought by Sandy Sutherland
After touring much of the Highlands last year, we have sold “Mo”, our old campervan. Did she fail the MOT? No. In actual fact, apart from a couple of advisories, she passed!
The problem is that I have too many advisories! Nothing particularly serious but with the passing of time my “bearings” aren’t what they used to be. However, we haven’t given up on our four-wheeled travelling adventures. We have instead upgraded to a more spacious motorhome.
What is ageing anyway? Where did it come from? Why can’t we stop it? Why isn’t there a pill for it? I’ve tried chondroitin glucosamine, vitamins, cider vinegar with the mother but nothing stops it. Oh for a bite of the fruit of the Tree of Life!
Biblically speaking, when Eden’s paradise was lost and ageing began to take place, the tree of life was not removed but was guarded by armed cherubim bearing flaming swords, preventing a return to the tree’s fruit and, thereby, living forever in Paradise Lost. But the tree’s non-removal gave hope of a return to it one day. But how can we get past the not so angelic armed bouncers?
The apostle Paul can’t wait to tell us the Good News, for, in his first recorded sermon (Acts 13), he reveals that paradise’s password is not, as he once thought, through the popular concept of trying to keep the Law of Moses but rather through faith in Jesus Christ, who by his active and passive obedience kept the Law on his people’s behalf before paying the price for their redemption. Thereby, trust in what Christ has done extinguishes the angelic guards’ flaming swords giving access to Paradise Found rather than a return to Paradise Lost.
We do not need to be biblical scholars to see the unity between the bible’s first and last chapters. Genesis’ tree of life re-emerges in Revelation’s paradise. But it is the cross, “the tree of death”, at the centre of the overall unity of the bible that makes it possible for the distant ends of God’s revelation to embrace.
Revelation’s paradise is not merely Eden restored but upgraded. In Jesus—though his resurrection, ascension and session to the right hand of God— humanity has been raised to a peerless transfigured majesty. Thereby, will there not be, in the new paradise a rise in the nature of things such a glorified people are to occupy?
Genesis’ Eden, for instance, has gold but it is earth-locked but Revelation’s gold is pictured as a pavement under the feet of the new paradises’ occupants. Furthermore, the split river system of the original Eden is now portrayed as one river flowing from the throne of God, giving assurance that there will no longer be any shortage: the tree of life crops every month and is pictured on both sides of this river, underlining the provision of God. The leaves of the tree will be for the healing of the nations: total shalom in an enhanced universe.
This promised new heaven and earth will be no mere seminary, but a place where not only the Creator will be the subject of worship but the creation will be the object of amazement with new travels of discovery; with no more ageing or advisories!
No wonder the constant refrain of Paradise Found will be: “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honour and glory and power, for ever and ever!”
Sandy Sutherland is a retired Free Church minister living in Brora.
