All posts tagged Art

I started reading Middle Earth: Journeys in Myth and Legend by Donato Giancola tonight. Well, “reading” isn’t entirely accurate, since the publication is of Donato’s art around the J.R.R. Tolkien classics.

Either way, early in the book it had this amazing painting:

The previous page described it:

Bilbo’s reluctant journey from his Shire paradise, driven by curiousity, finds a parallel in the expulsion of Adam and Eve. Like the biblical first people, Bilbo finds himself thrown into a world of awe and terror; every encounter in The Hobbit makes the world ever larger and more complex for the provincial young man. Bilbo’s humble and naive nature keeps him alive through his adventures, yet he is changed forever by his experiences in the outside world. Unlike Adam and Eve, Bilbo physically returns to his Eden, but it never again feels genuinely like home.

We Christians believe we will return to Edenic conditions, and I personally wouldn’t be surprised if the reason God will create a new earth (see Revelation 21:1) is so we can return to the perfect home originally crafted for us.

Will we feel at home?

For the saved, I would think essentially yes (although I imagine it could take some initial getting used to). God changes us so that we will.

The unsaved, however, would never feel at home in Eden.

When God recreates Eden, will you feel at home in it?

If not, you won’t be there…