OUR ORIGINAL PURPOSE

Despite other less wholesome suggestions, the world’s oldest profession is that of a gardener, although perhaps it is better described as a vocation.

Gardening was the primary task given to the first human beings. “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). And this was where Micah’s vision of God’s future would lead us.

This passage is not intended as a description of heaven as such. It contrasts markedly with most portrayals of the future of the faithful and the redeemed.

According to the Hebrew prophets, the future would be a place of vocational enjoyment: “The prophets envisage redeemed humanity as humanity at work, but in the joy afforded by the absence of warfare, the reign of righteousness and peace, and the cooperation of nature. . . . The new creation restores God’s original purpose for humanity.”* The reality is that working without fear or threat makes the work more worthwhile.

When gardeners are assured of enjoying the results of their labor and care, the work becomes part of the pleasure. In that time and place where “no one will make them afraid,” we will be returned to our original purpose, original relationships, and original vocation. Rather than some super-spiritual sky resort, God’s future for His people will see them as fully human. The new is the original. Micah would have understood this as a restoration of the people to the land of Israel, but in Jesus and in God’s larger plan, this vision expands to become the re-creation and restoration of the whole earth and all of creation—and the return of humanity to all we were created to be and to do.

* Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004), 161, 162.