Awenydd » Adam’s Home Base

Adam’s Home Base

eden We often think of the Garden of Eden the way we think of a monastery. Adam and Eve were placed there. Everything they needed was there. Why in the world would they ever want to leave? But God did not create man for sequestered existence.

I think we should think of Eden more as Adam’s home base. It was a place of worship. And it was his headquarters, the place where he walked and talked with God, and where God gave him his marching orders. And the first order was this: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” From there, Adam was to go forth and take dominion. Eden may have been his home, but the world was his workplace.

It is the same for us. Each week we meet with God face to face in Word and Sacrament. We dine with Christ and we receive his instruction. But from there we are to go forth. The world is the field of conquest and we are to take the field and establish dominion.

Before the fall, Eden was not all there was. It was home base, but just as an army is not formed to remain at home base, man is not to remain cloistered in Eden, and we are not to sit idle in the Church.