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Perfect World

             In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness…

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground… God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.” (Genesis 1:1-4, 26 & 31)

 

I opened a different book today, The Journey of Desire by John Eldredge. He begins with the sense we have that things are not as they should be and that we are not as we should be. In today’s passage, we glimpse how things should be from a distance, through a looking glass that lets us see without really seeing. We like to think that if we could step into that world, it would delight us. It probably would, but I wonder if it would fit the paradise of our imagination. And if we did step into it, how long would it be before we contaminated it?

This desire for the perfect world and the perfect life may be the siren song or the will-o’-wisp that lures so many toward homesteading. I look down my nose at the dreamers who want a homestead that will let them get up mid-morning and drink their coffee while watching “baby goats” in pajamas and “baby chickens” in tutus cavort around the place. Later, they’ll wander through their gardens, picking grocery-store-perfect fruit and vegetables for dinner or to preserve for the winter. In the evening, they’ll play computer games even though they’re “off-grid” to the light of a cheerful crackling fire.

I try to disillusion them, but I have my own dreams. I hope they’re more realistic, but probably not. I want to build what I call a monastery garden. I want a sanctuary that provides many of my needs and allows me to help others. I’ve ditched the costumed critters, and I recognize that there’s a lot more work involved than my body and my bank account may be able to accomplish.

This reminds me of part of the conversation in Sunday School last Sunday. We discussed worldviews, which are often described as how things all began, what went wrong, and how we fix things. Sometimes, we aren’t realistic. Sometimes we are at least part of the problem that needs to be fixed. And really, this is where we began in the last book, and the answer is the same. Seek God. It is only when He is at the center of our desire, the source of how things began and the answer to making things right that things can ever be right. Our own petty kingdoms will always fail.

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