Bible is the story of..., the
The Bible is the story of... man, being driven out of the
beautiful garden, wandering throughout the earth, and seeking every means to
return to that lovely place -- until, finally, in Christ, he finds that lost
Paradise again.
Or...
The Bible is the story of... a tree of life: man was shut off
from that tree, but many years it reappeared, in man's presence. It appeared
first of all as a tree of "death", a cross, but from the tree of "death" came a
new "life". And we are all invited to partake of this new "tree of life"... both
now and forever, in the coming garden, or paradise, of God.
Or...
The Bible is the story of... wandering away from the Father's
house, and finally finding one's way home again. (For this purpose, Christ's
parable of the "prodigal son" in Luke 15 may be the best... short...
example.)
The writer -- Thomas Wolfe, wasn't it? -- famously said, "You
can't go home again!" By which I think he meant (I didn't major in English
literature, by the way) something like... 'We can never return to the idyllic
time and place of our youth... that place doesn't exist any more; time has swept
us all along, and we can't turn around and go back.' A lament to lost youth, and
the inexorable passage of time, or -- as Ecclesiastes puts it -- " 'Meaningless!
Meaningless!' says the Teacher. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is
meaningless.' What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the
sun?" (Ecc 1:2,3). And that book has much more in the same vein. As if
Ecclesiastes, though it is surely inspired, nevertheless gives us a Divine
recounting of man's sad story of life "under the sun" -- that is, of life lived
without God -- and how, ultimately, it leads only to the grave. This, I would
say, is not the main theme of the Bible -- but it is, shall we say, UNREDEEMED
MAN's theme: the poignant counterpoint to the REAL story of the Bible, which
is...
'You CAN go "home" again! There is a beautiful garden, and a
tree of life, and a loving Father waiting with outstretched arms -- welcoming
His children back into His embrace... no matter how far away, or how long, they
have wandered from Him.'
