Push Back the Darkness This Week

It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. — Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien didn’t have to try hard to imagine a war-torn world filled with evil and darkness. In his lifetime he witnessed two world wars, genocide, famine, dictatorship, economic collapse, and more. Tolkien could write of a world oppressed by darkness because that was the world he experienced. The darkness of Middle-earth was fictional, but it was based on reality. Our sin-stricken world is encompassed by darkness. The everyday stuff of life is stained by the effects of sin.

But it hasn’t always been this way.

A couple pages into the story of the Bible, our attention is drawn to an incredible locale on planet earth: the garden of Eden. Humanity’s story began in a place free from pain, suffering, sorrow, and sin. The kingdom of God and the dwelling place of man overlapped in a real, time-space location. Eden was literally heaven on earth.

Then came rebellion. We were kicked out of the garden—out of that kingdom marked by security, peace, and joy—and we were plunged into a new kingdom dominated by darkness and death (Gen. 3:14–19).

The rest of the Bible is about God’s plan to bring us back to Eden—actually, to something even better. To reinstate his eternal dwelling place, and to once again welcome humanity back into his kingdom.

But we’re not there yet. Read More