Eden is hidden, now a dimension rather than a location.
Yet it can be found in the heavenlies
by the violent search of the desperate,
who have no self made fig leaves but
only Christ's provided cover . . . a gift to the needy,
who know their Eden shame.

The rent veil of the Cross opened the
Garden of Rest again.
The gate is open, the banishment over.
Jesus is Himself the Way toward it,
the Gate of Entrance . . . and . . . the Lush Garden.

Christ is also the Flaming Sword,
God's Very Word that still banishes the soul,
and separates the spirit from that contamination.

The Flaming Sword ever guards Eden.
The Living Sword that cleared God's House of Prayer
with violence, the Sword whose words pierce
into your deluded heart,
find your secret reasons
and your blind loves.

To pass by the Sword you must be unmasked by its swirls
and boiled in its scorching Reality.
Left and right, cutting out your cancered sin
and stripping you back to Primal Creation.

The Sword-Word guards but the Sword also prepares.
For God's REAL presence,
the Paradise of His highest communion you must pass by
the Flaming Sword and
the Cherubim Guardians of
His holiness.
But NOW you can . . . . 

Tunics of skin were temporary,
symbolic and not real. 

We will wear the clothing that Eden demands:
we must wear only our naked need
and also . . . original innocence.

The barrenness is mine.
The Innocence is God's New Clothing,
the tunic of His Son's Butchered Body.
Killed to be our tunic.
 
The clothing of Christ's very holiness
now is real, covering all shame,
all trespasses, every sin
and is not merely outer covering but
the bestowing of the very divine nature of God,
a holiness inside! a purity of gift,
merely received . . . but only by the humble guilty . . .
the honest sinner in Adamic destitution.

God can commune in daily bliss only with
the simple child, the pure of heart.
To that we are reduced by the holy fire of
wrenching repentance,
by desperation's awful reality.
Reduced and wounded by the Twirling Sword,
"Adam and Eve" in our marrow
annihilated, eliminated.

They were naked in their soul by sin.
We, made naked in our soul by the
realization of our kinship with them,
our grotesque duplication of their rebellion.

The naked are ready to be clothed by
the Father of Lights . . .
now by the Cross of His Son, we are
clothed within, by an unseen but
vivid Life, the very Life of Christ
IS our holiness, righteousness, purity.

To see! To grasp that Holy Life IS
to pass by the Sword and Cherubim guardians,
granted ready entrance to the Garden of
God's Fathering presence, walking in bliss
of the Spirit's ever-new morning.

And the Garden for His Family wraps around
us, enclosed as children, and the Gate is
barred from any entry.

A Father and His children, reunited . . . at last
in the Kingdom Garden.
A Kingdom Garden so close, so available that
it is within and among us. A garden enclosed with Him . . .

the kingdom of God is    
within you.
Luke 17:21 NIV
 
Mark 10:14,15 - the kingdom belongs to the child
I Corinthians 1:30, Phil. 3:9 - Christ is our righteousness
Jude 24, 25 - He will present us blameless
Song of Solomon 4:12 - garden enclosed.

Copyright © 2001 Martha Kilpatrick