By Rev. Mary Beth Farrell

As we enter the final week of Lent, we are back in the garden where the story began. The Garden of Eden has inspired painters, poets and theologians for centuries. The description of the regular ritual of God meeting Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening evokes beauty, harmony and profound peace, and plants a longing deep within each of us for the return of Eden. We are given a peek of what is to come with the promise of a New Jerusalem, and a tree whose leaves will heal all nations.

But between those two are generations of sin, heartache, loss, and pain, which our Lord took upon himself as he submitted to the Cross. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane where he went to pray to his Father, taking his disciples with him. And it is there that He is betrayed, abandoned and arrested. It is here where we must tarry with Him.