For today, read through Genesis chapter 3.

DEVOTIONAL:

"The voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day." –Genesis 3:8

Thus God started man in an ideal home. Memories of Eden, exquisite as dreams, weave the background of human life. Fellowship with the Creator, who walked its glades; its river, trees, and fruits; its blessed companionship; its light and ennobling toils—how fair the picture!

The Garden of Eden.—That was God's ideal. When men point thee to the scars on the world's face, left by the trail of the Arab slaver, the march of the army, the decaying glory of human civilization, and ask how such things are consistent with God's love, point to that garden and say, "That is what the love of God meant for man; Satan and sin have wrought this."

The Garden of Gethsemane.—When man forfeited Paradise, the Savior was revealed to regain it. He trod the winepress alone in the shadowed garden of the olive trees that through its glades He might pass to his cross, and so make the wastes of sin bloom again as Eden. Is it wonderful that another Paradise is possible, when He sowed its seeds and watered the soil with his blood?

Turning wastes into gardens.—In Eden man wrought as God's fellow-worker; and we are called each day to do something towards reconstructing the Lost Paradise. Find thy part in delving, sowing, watering, or tending the tender shoots! Seek that thine heart should be an Eden, kept sacred for thy King, and endeavor thy best to plant gardens where hitherto sand-wastes and thorn-thickets have prevailed. Then, "instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off."

The rest is history.

–Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening