Today is the last day, in the year of our Lord, 2025. Is it time for new year’s resolutions? I would say not particularly. I know my choices I’ve made in 2025. Some choices I have taken I can look back upon and know without any doubt have been the best of my life. I have made bad choices this year as well and I realized quickly my time for making a resolution to be more like Christ was right then, and not to wait until December 31st. But, every-day choices don’t define the path of my life. The path of my life is made by those few major choices as well as those habitual minor choices. Psalm 119:105 “Your word is a lamp unto my feet [choices] and a light unto my path”.
I started reading _Paradise Restored_ by David Chilton and after just a couple of chapters I now see more clearly an answer to perhaps my favorite Bible verse of this year: Psalm 139:17 “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!”. In my personal Bible reading I have been reading and meditating on the gospel of John.
The “Word of God” threads its way throughout this entire gospel. “In the beginning was the Word.” The “Word became flesh.” “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.” This Word who became flesh said “I do nothing on my own authority, but speak just as the Father taught me.” “All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”
Over 40 years ago I worked with a fellow Christian who claimed that in the world his behavior was no different than that of a morally good person. In effect, he challenged me to think about any earthly purpose that someone be a Christian. Other than moral goodness and personal evangelism I couldn’t come up with anything.
The Bible is God’s Word to me. It starts with His Word creating all things in 6 days “and behold it was very good”. Shortly afterward God’s adversary, Satan, told a lie to Eve to get her to not believe in God’s Word. After Adam and Eve sinned God prophetically told the serpent “… he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” _Paradise Restored_ addresses the prophetic Word of God starting here and teaches the serious reader who believes God’s thoughts are precious how to understand God’s Word from cover to cover. How good is my grasp of the overall biblical story? Do I believe in only a heavenly (not earthly) eternity? Was Jesus’ resurrected body, that could be felt and could eat fish, only for those disciples to convince them to believe he rose from the dead? Will that “very good” garden of Adam and Eve ever be restored?
Since I claim to believe God’s Word is Truth I must ask myself one more question. What would the King of kings “who holds all authority on earth” be saying to me about my choices (steps) and path to work toward restoring paradise?
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