day no. 15,671: ungardened

Genesis 3:16-20
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.

God made man from the dust of the garden. He breathed His Spirit into the dust He had formed and it became a living being. God then made woman from the side of the man. He removed his rib and formed it into a woman. In the woman, He planted a garden. So when He led her to the first man, He was presenting the man with a fruit of the garden that had in itself another garden. The man was made from garden and so the woman was made from man who was made of garden, but in her He planted another garden.

As a result of sin, all the gardens of earth were cursed. All the gardens were ungardened.

The garden inside the woman would now be full of the thorns and thistles of labor and delivery. The sorrow and pain of bringing forth fruit from her garden would be multiplied. Making and multiplying disciples would now be a much more painful endeavor. 

The garden itself would now be full of thorns and thistles. The ground would not gladly give up its yield without producing prickly reminders of what went wrong in refusing to walk in covenant faith and obedience with God. The ground was cursed and the garden suffered.

The garden that was animated man would now sweat and toil and labor with great exhaustion to bring forth fruit from the soil. He was Spirit-powered garden and his land was now cursed and would respond to his poor leadership with poor followship. And the garden of life where abundance was created by God would now end in death. Where fruit and life and vigor and joy and glory once grew, death and evaporation and sin would fight for real estate. Weeds would now crowd out the wheat where it could.