Eden was a place of perfect harmony. But as soon as we—in the persons of Adam and Eve—took our lives into our own hands, that harmony was disrupted and we were plunged into a new reality of brokenness:
Life would be easier, wouldn’t it, if all its pieces held together. If they always made sense. If nothing ever broke off. If no part were ever lost, or twisted, or detached….
Imagine life in Paradise. Eden was the wonderful opening chord of life, complete harmony with nothing in excess, nothing missing, nothing broken. But when that break did happen (and what an awful shattering sound it made), when human beings said, “we think we can do this on our own,” all creation shuddered and cracks spread throughout.
Our only hope from then on was that someone, somewhere would help us put the pieces back together.
When the Bible says that “in him [that is, Christ], all things hold together,” it is describing the fundamental structure of all reality. “All things” means all things. Go down to the level of the molecule, then the individual atom, and science will tell you that it is a mystery how atoms and their particles hold together. But they do. How is it that you put into your mouth meat and potatoes and vegetables, and they are broken apart, but you yourself don’t break apart? Your body keeps reorganizing itself, growing, healing. The biological pieces keep coming together, with some interruptions for illness, until that last breath moves out across your lips and the spirit departs. Only then does your body return to dust….
Our only hope of surviving in a broken, disconnected, fractured world is the fact that God created everything according to a grand pattern. The very meaning of the word “creation” is taking pieces and making a whole. Heaven and earth do fit together, even though it oftentimes seems as if they are two different universes. God created the visible and the invisible as one reality, though now we so often choose to live merely as bodies without souls. Why, at creation, did it all hold together? Why are there patterns to the pieces? It is because “all things were created by him and for him.”
We owe what little order we have in our lives to God and His original plan. Jesus Christ works to restore that order—to bring us back into harmony with God’s plan. It’s not always easy to discern anything resembling a divine plan in the often messy reality of our everyday existence… but take time this weekend to look for signs of God’s plan in your life. God can bring His order into even the most chaotic of places.
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