Where the four rivers ran and parted their ways
In the ancient grove in the first of days
God’s Image awoke and stretched out his hands
To join his Creator in working the clay.

One arm round the waist of his ebony bride,
He governed the garden of earthly delights,
Awash in the wonder of order and right
That flowed as he strolled by the Holy One’s side.

Till one disordered being with poison in its jaws
Stunned the cosmic order by the blasphemy it brought
As it whispered to the Adam to extend a grasping hand
Condemning the Creator’s law, abandoning his love.

Now there’s a rebel in the garden, a thief beside the tree.
Now the man has stood when he should have bowed the knee.
Hear the serpent’s rasping laughter like the rattling of chains
Clasping round the souls of all the children yet to be.

Then the life of Man rolled on through ages of disgrace
Writhing in the self-will of his miserific state.
In exile in the wilderness, the barren salt land,
Blind eyes seeking endlessly a happy resting place.

Nimrod, Lamech, Cain, are the tyrants of the land;
Noah, Daniel, Job, couldn’t stay the holy hand
Of judgment falling swift and righteous on the heads
Of every last depraved and ruined, sinful son of Man.

The twisted story corkscrews down and spirals into death,
Nooses pulling tighter as we try to loose the net
Entangling the will to pray, gone the strength to hope
That anyone who walks the earth could swallow such a debt.

Until.

Until the Son came forward, whom the virgin had conceived,
And he grew before the face of God, the chosen, fruitful seed,
The King bringing a kingdom to replace the tyrant’s throne.
So the panicked sons of darkness tried to pluck him like a weed.

Now there’s a good man in the garden in the shadow of the Tree,
Laying his desires down before his Father’s feet,
And the serpent’s spitting laughter is strangled by his prayer
As it cuts the rebel children’s chains for all eternity.

Now he staggers up the thorn-entangled suffering of the way
With joy set straight before him once the bitter cup is drained.
Watch the peak of mankind’s wickedness there on the skull-shaped hill
Turned by God Almighty into heaven’s entryway

As redemption’s blushing morning rolls astonished like the stone
On the bursting mirthful answer to creation’s aching groans.
The Man who died and lived again stands on the serpent’s head
And all who look to Him in hope belong to Him alone.

Soon, he told his brothers, with a crackle and a flash
The heavens will be riven like a parted veil of ash
Drawn back by the Bridegroom come to resurrect his Bride,
His righteousness her wedding gown, his brightness now her sash.

Then the garden will grow green beneath the healing Tree’s leaves
Where all the glorious saints become a rippling, white-robed sea,
The inheritance awarded to this Man, the King of kings
Whose diamond glory shimmers through their worship flowing free.

And as the river irrigates the city drenched in light,
The glories of the Godhead raise Mankind into flight
Together with Creator, Father, Lover, and Redeemer,
To unrelenting ages of abiding by his side.