The Eden You Must Cultivate To Gain Good Success
Rev. Br. Ken Chigozie Alamezie, BSS
Everyone you meet on the streets today wants to live in high spirits and enjoy good breaks in their endeavors, but unknown to many is the secret door to that life of serenity, happiness and good success which they covet. Of course, there are some who know a thing or two about this secret door to life of bliss but who wouldn’t want to take that step necessary to get to it. This desire in man to live a blissful and fulfilled life, I find, isn’t an evil thing as one could say it is something inbuilt in him. The Creator, in the beginning, never had it in mind to put us through life of suffering and pain. He couldn’t have! He is goodness and mercy in himself. Also, one could say that he purposely put in man this desire to be happy and succeed so as to help him cultivate both himself and the environment where he finds himself. You find that happiness and fulfillment can only be found in that man or woman who has ‘cultivated’ ‘tilled and taken care of’ himself or herself. It is this self-cultivation that awakens in one the tools, potentials, with which he or she can use to cultivate his or her environment. Yes, people must cultivate themselves before they could better cultivate the environment, institution, whether social or religious where they find themselves; and those who think and or want it otherwise are doomed to fail.
It is not by chance that the very first thing the Creator did after creating man was to place him in a garden, Eden, where he would cultivate. “Yahweh God took Man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to Cultivate it” Gen 2:15. Some translations translate the word ‘cultivate’ in this passage as ‘till it and take care of it.’ Yet, despite the translation used in your version of the Bible, I think the important thing is to comprehend the message it carries.
To ‘cultivate’ or ‘till and take care of’ in this context simply means, I believe, to explore and bring out the best in us and everything around us; to discover one’s hidden potentials and those lying within everything and everyone around him, maximize same and guard the growth consequent in doing so; to make fruitful oneself, everything and everyone around him or her . The Creator couldn’t have told man to cultivate (till and take care of) a place shown him if he hadn’t deposited in him everything he would need to achieve that purpose; and, giving man such a task, I think, was a way of telling him to continue from where He stopped in the work of creation. This explains the reason for Man’s advancement in scientific innovations today.
But there is something remarkable in the passage cited above: immediately after Man’s creation, his Creator took and placed him in a Garden called Eden. Eden we are told is an Hebrew word for “where God dwells.” In other words, it is the abode of God. In the verse sixteen of Genesis 2:15, we find that God immediately after placing and telling Man to cultivate Eden—His Presence, Where He dwells—didn’t hesitate to tell him what he must do and what he must not do. “Then Yahweh God gave Man an order saying, You may eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of Good and Evil” Gen 2:16. And having received simple and explicit instruction regarding (what to do to tarry in the place Where God dwells) Eden, Man was saddled at once with the responsibility to explore his potentials, his creative prowess in this context. The succeeding verses tell us so, as there we find God bringing all what he had created to Man for him to name them. That’s creativity at play, isn’t it?
The point I wish to draw out here is this: as Man that you are, one created in God’s image and likeness, the possibility of you discovering your God-given potentials, impacting positively your generation and by this attaining the very height you were meant to attain in life, is solely dependent on your ability to cultivate the Eden in you—your HEART, “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life”(Prov. 4:23).
Folks, your heart is this Eden-- God’s dwelling place, a magnificent temple--where God desires to live. This is no empty talk. Hear this, “Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these things?” (Acts 7:48-51) “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
Yet God does not and cannot dwell in a scruffy place. This means you have a duty to tidy up, ‘cultivate’ ‘Till and take care of’ your heart, if God must come in and remain there. And know that it is only the light of God—his presence--in your heart that can awaken and illuminate the eyes of your heart to see the potentials put in there and with which you can cultivate your environment and have a successful life on earth.
But how do I do this now? You may ask. It’s simple: work on your Eden by uprooting from it every tree growing there whose fruits are capable of driving God’s presence from you. Friend, be wary of any tree that its fruits are capable of polluting your Eden and consequently drive God’s presence from you! As it was then, so it is today. Then Father, God, told Papa Adam to stay away from the fruits of a particular tree and not to partake of them, as he would die if he did. Now he tells us to stay away from every fruits of unrighteousness, if we must retain his presence and glory in us. “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:9-21). All these are fruits of a tree called sin, and they are capable of driving God’s light from any man, which result is confusion, stagnation, and death. Folks, if there is anything you don’t want to lose in life, it is God’s presence, his light. It is this presence, light, and glory of God that guarantee happiness and fulfillment in the life of any man. God bless you!