~ ~     A MAN WITH A PLAN     ~ ~
    
It started in the Garden of Eden, a place of peace and of infinite and glorious beauty, designed for God's dusty creations, man and woman.  Our Lord God envisioned a life of  joy and love for these two as they frollicked among the lush flora of an immaculate paradise.  He soon saw the fickleness and egotistical wills of His creation and His "Will" took a detour which would hinder His plan by thousands of years. 

Man and woman were banned from Eden to live and toil all of their days in a dying, reeling, stormy, riotous world.  On melancholy days, it seemed they could sense a whiff of the tantalizing aromas from the Angel-guarded home from which they were banned.  If they could just go back and erase the sin.  Eve rued the day she fell for the beguiling powers of the now ground-hugging slithering snake.  Adam blamed Eve and some days when his longing for the Garden overwhelmed him, he could not even look at her.  They had stumbled from a dream world and crashed into working, slaving reality.

God in the flesh, Jesus Christ our Lord, is patient beyond comprehension.  Thousands of years flew by and as He pondered it all, He chronicled the events very methodically.  There was Noah and the Ark, destruction of all mankind, "because of Sin," with only those few saved in the boat.  Oh, then there was Moses, his voice screaming "let my people go;" he had this quenchless hunger that caused him to climb a mountain and sit in an aerie mist to receive the tablets of Commandments written by the finger of God.  All of this was to salvage a desert-weary, wandering people who had angered the face of God, "because of Sin."  Later came Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed in disdain "because of Sin."  The years flew by with little change and Kings were banished to the fields to eat grass like animals, "because of  Sin;" King David lost his love child, and fell on his face in the temple to kiss the Son lest He be angry, all "because of Sin." Down through the years, humans suffered over and over, a pattern of disobedience and rampant revelry "because of Sin."  But, hope reigns eternal, for God is a Man with a Plan.

In the book of Matthew, the Lord said, "And as it was in days of Noah, so shall it also be in the days of the Son of man," and the Bible goes on to say that people were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in the marriage; then the flood came and destroyed them all, "because of Sin."  The circle always comes back to judgment, "because of Sin."

This generation has come to the end of the dilemma.  We are seeing wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes in divers places, hatred and striving, strange weather patterns, wonders in the heavens and in the earth, with the looming threat of total destruction; why?  It's the age-old problem, "because of Sin."  There will be a judgment, a long and painful seven-year tribulation, a final cleansing of God's beloved earth in order to set things right.  God desires to erase all the carnage, allow the scented foliage to bloom, and peek through the lattice to observe an innocent creation one more time. 

"And I John saw the Holy City, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."  Revelation 21:2.  There will come an ordained period of a thousand years of peace, stated in Revelation 20; the lamb will lay down with the lion and we will study war no more.  The journey has brought us full circle, from Genesis to Revelation, from the Garden of Eden "BACK" to the Garden of Eden again!  God never leaves anything undone; man does not have the final say.  It was a Garden He intended for His creation and a Garden He shall have! 
Jesus Christ, our Lord, a Man with a Plan!
                                                                                                                                                               By Sheryl Fowler

(Visit promiselandchurch.net.  PromiseLand Church, Austin, Tx)