Summary
Uses as Epistle LCOS May 2026
The other day, my daughter Eden and I went on a walk in the woods. We left our house in the morning to go “fairy hunting.” We looked into flowers, behind bushes and trees. I don’t think either of us knows what we would do if we ever found a fairy - but that’s beside the point. As we tried to locate Tinkerbelle’s home, we stopped and we looked. We listened and touched. We picked seeds from dried pods (one of which is sprouting in my office as I write this). We watched a bird and wondered where its nest might be. We had no agenda or place to reach. It was a few moments of pure exploration for its own sake.
In that little letting go, I realized how quickly I can forget what quiet abiding is all about. Everything in adult life tends to yell: “Hurry Up!” Maybe it’s the literal driver behind you, or the silent accusation of a neglected pile of laundry. Todo lists never get shorter on their own you know. Yet regardless of where the voice may be coming from, we all feel that pressure to keep moving forward.
But where exactly is “forward” or the place we all want to reach? All of us can vaguely locate that place. We all know it has to be out there somewhere. Maybe it’s in the future after an achievement or goal. Or maybe it’s in the past when things were simpler. But as life keeps its steady pace, the pull to that place is always just out of reach. As if we just missed it, or maybe we will get there tomorrow…
That place of paradise has had many names: utopia, nostalgia, High School, the Fountain of Youth, Atlantis, El Dorado…
What is your name for it?
Write it down right now in the margin or text it to yourself.
What makes that place so desirable to you?
If we compared our places, they may seem very different at first. But all of us have the same urge to find, or get back to, a place of paradise. Many human lives, even whole civilizations, have risen and fallen chasing after that mystical place. The good news for us is that Jesus has shown us the true way to paradise. But it lives where we would never have looked on our own.
Humans have always tried to find paradise on our own and failed. The fancy word for trying to bring the “paradise” of the past back is called repristination. Which is the idea that if we could just: “Do it like we used to” then everything would be okay again.
While on the other hand, the idea of perpetual progress hopes to find paradise in the future. If humans keep inventing and researching and discovering, then somewhere down the line, all that work will add up to a human built “paradise.”
Neither alternative has ever worked and never will. Because paradise cannot come from human effort. The only spring from which it flows is the goodness of our Creator. On the sixth day creations was “very good” because of who created it - not the smarts or abilities of humans.
However disappointing it may feel, God does not delight in the multiplication of your achievements. But as Psalm 147 reminds us, He delights in our clinging to Him:
Psalm 147:10-11
His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man, but the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.
The path to paradise is not paved with human achievements. For it was human achievements that slammed shut the door of Eden. Human achievements built monuments and cities on the back of Hebrew slaves. Every human paradise has turned into a living hell eventually. The true way to paradise is only found through the goodness of God.
Life will always keep shouting: “Hurry Up!” It will always prick you to look back and remember those good old days. But take a moment to place where that pull toward paradise truly finds its fulfillment.
Not in you. Or in the past. Or in the future.
It comes in the words of Jesus:
Matthew 11:28-30
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
May you find the rest of Jesus this Easter season. Because where Jesus and His word abides, there is true paradise. Not only in the future or past, but in the drawing near of the Eternal One.
Revelation 1:8
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”