From an Avacado

Just last week we found an avocado tree and we picked some avocados! For some reason I was very excited about all this. My wife thought I was way too excited--Avocados! (She knows that I'm really allergic to them.) Katie looked at me and smiled, wondering why I was this happy about avocados I could not eat.

For some reason, I think trees have property lines. People own property, and if the tree is in your property, then that tree is yours. If the tree has fruit, then the fruit is yours, but since the tree is not mine, the fruit cannot be mine either, unless I pay for it.

On campus, however, there are so many fruits--coconuts, mangos, avocados... And they are for anyone! Now, you cannot just pick all the fruit for yourself. That would just be selfish. But it is so exciting to pick fruit straight from a tree when walking down the path. Or sometime on a break from class, workers climb the coconut trees and pick the buko to share with anyone who is nearby.

I was so excited about this small avocado that we had in our apartment. In Eden you could just pick a fruit off the tree. We got to thinking--maybe this is what it must have been like there.

I told Katie that if I could paint (which I can't, really), but if I could, one of the paintings I would put together would be like that. In the foreground there is a grove or an orchard with two kids playing in them. One climbing the closest. All their leaves a verdant green, waving like an ocean of life in the wind. And in the background is a warm glow. Maybe it's the sun. Maybe it's not.

The girl is in the tree sitting with the boy. Quite content. Ya' know, a little bit Rockwell. And the girl is looking back over her shoulder with a smile, waving someone up. "Come on up here!" You know how little children are. And you can tell its a person by the way they cast a shadow, but maybe its not a shadow. Maybe its that warm glow from before, and its in the shape of a person. And maybe its God climbing a tree with them.

What a special time that must have been for God. The two kids, Adam and Eve, they had no Daddy but God (or mother for that matter). God was their only teacher. Can you see it? God teaching boy Adam how to name the animals, or how to name math? Teaching girl Eve how to name the sky blue or how to run through fields.

And it got ruined somehow. I asked Katie if she thought God remembered those times--those times with His children Adam and Eve. She thought he did. Maybe God reminisces, catches Himself thinking about them when He's not supposed to be--you know when He's supposed to be busy with work, busy running the Cosmos or something. Catches Himself looking out onto the land out there, at the oceans of trees and feels something small twitch, break.

And then I thought, maybe that's why He's been struggling all these years. He's been pushing, working, chasing to get back there--and not really back there as if all He does is dream after the past. But forging ahead a bright new world where He is once again their creator and they His children. And maybe that's why He struggled for me and for you. He wants to be there, in that place with us. Not really making us children again, but making us His children again.

I think it made sense at that point. Why Jesus marched Himself up a high hill bleeding all over Himself.

That's why He's making His way again, working around the clock. To get His family back. His second firstborn Son has started bringing them all back. And its not over yet :) But now, God has to make room for His grandchildren, and He has to make room for His great grandchildren, and their grandchildren, and their...

And there it will be again, learning from Him, and loving Him. There in groves of green avocado trees with an unfading light.