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I watched a documentary called Eden Revealed. It was about an archaeological dig in northern Turkey that had found a complex of  carved standing stones that led them to rethink the current views on the life of hunter gatherers in the Fertile Crescent.

It came up with a hypothesis that showed the reason they went from being hunter gathers to farmers toiling day and night to grow crops. Perhaps most interestingly from other sites as well they came to the conclusion that human health suffered a dramatic decline as result in this change of life. The bones spoke to them of many of our own problems with arthritis and other diseases.

They suggested that this change from roaming and enjoying the fruits of the earth in season and eating meat to a life lived in one place where they toiled to grow food less nourishing than what had been gathered and killed in the old life could be likened to the Biblical story of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

It was a tolerable idea and one that set my mind off on its own track.

The fundamental thrust of the Biblical story is about trust and reliance on God. In the Garden of Eden all was provided for Adam and Eve they neither toiled nor wept but ate freely of the bounty around them, given to them by God. When they broke that trust and were expelled they found life hard and had to work their fingers to the bone in order to survive.

There is a lesson we need to learn from all this and it is a hard one to achieve but with clear sighted vision it can be grasped if not as a permanent state then at least as an occasional grace. To be truly imitators of Christ we have to learn to trust completely in God, not just for the big things but for everything we need every day. To let God be in charge and to behave with Him as once we did with our parents as children. Did we worry then what we ate or wore? No of course not everything we needed was given to us. As adults it can be very difficult to place ourselves in that position where we let go and trust God with everything in our lives. What needless stress we live with trying to be self sufficient.

Happiness (or perhaps a better word would be contentment) lies  in living in that relationship with God. It is a little like learning to ride a bike we don’t think we can at all and suddenly after practise we learn how to balance and off we go. Trying to live in that trusting relationship with God is like that learning process, we daren’t try it on our own, we are tentative perhaps a bit scared and then once we trust we are off, free.

Learning to submit and to hand over everything to God and to walk daily in that trust, that childlike dependency, is no easy task but it can be done and it brings with it an enormous peace.

I would not suggest such a path unless I had learned it myself and lived it as a reality not knowing where my next meal would come from. I never tested God but I did come to rely on Him many times in my life and was surprised over and over again by His Fatherly care.