Virtual Pilgrimage Week 6 - The Garden
It has often been noted that the Bible begins in a garden with a tree whose fruit leads to the first sin (Genesis 2 and 3) and ends with the New Jerusalem in which there is a tree whose ‘leaves are for the healing of the nations’ (Revelation 22:1-5). John Milton described this powerfully in the 17th century in his epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. It might not be entirely incidental that Jesus sought his Father’s will also in a garden (Gethsemane) and sought the strength to fulfil his divine calling, which of course he did (Matthew 26: 36-56). Adam and Eve’s failure to obey God’s will in the Garden of Eden is mirrored in opposite by Jesus’s faithful following of God’s will in Gethsemane.