In the Garden

I was listening to a song on my ipod yesterday called “Garden” by Misty Edwards and it put me in mind of the track by Van Morrison, “in the Garden” from his album “No Guru, no Method no Teacher” that gripped me back in the eighties . Misty is a worship leader with the International House of Prayer, and the song is a relentless eight and a half minutes celebration of the intimacy God seeks to have with us if we would only draw near.

It's You and me alone God,

You and me alone

Here it's You and me alone

God, You and me alone...

Strikes me afresh just what a garden is. It’s an enclosed space. It’s a marked off territory that is owned by someone , cultivated by someone and to be enjoyed by someone. That’s why it was a garden planted in Eden and not a wilderness space, that became the backdrop for the creation of Adam. That’s where he found intimacy with his creator God. And in each one of our lives there’s a cultivated space that’s to be protected and kept. A place to retreat to and find oneself alone.

“And I felt the presence of the youth of eternal summers in the garden

Alright, and as it touched your cheeks so lightly

Born again you were and blushed

And we touched each other lightly

And we felt the presence of the Christ

Within our hearts in the garden

And I turned to you and I said

"No guru, no method, no teacher

Just you and I and nature

And the Father in the garden"

Listen, no guru, no method, no teacher

Just you and I and nature

And the Father and the Son

And the Holy Ghost in the garden wet with rain”

Amazing lyrics from the 1986 Van Morrison track, and maybe it won’t tick everybody’s theological boxes, but it’s an insight into the spiritual longing of the artist – a longing for intimacy, for acceptance, for transcendence and for understanding of the divine.

Back to Misty Edwards. She writes, in an interview

"I have a great desire to see the knowledge of God flood this generation. I mean the real knowledge of God, not the distant Sunday School version but the true encounter with the Uncreated. I have devoted my life to searching Him out through His Word, prayer and fasting, and to ask Him to reveal Himself in my day and time. There's no other point for my existence but to touch the Transcendent.”

That hungry generation was very evident at New Horizon last week. So good to see so many young people (and old) hungry for God and seeking his face here on the north coast of Northern Ireland

Van Morrison http://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Guru-Method-Teacher/dp/B0018PJF0W

Misty Edwards http://www.amazon.co.uk/Relentless-Misty-Edwards/dp/B001V6F840/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1280307941&sr=1-1