Diggerland

One of the families at Salem Chapel recently invited me to accompany them on an excursion to Diggerland at Castleford in West Yorkshire. Although ostensibly aimed at children, a great many dads, uncles and grandads appeared to be joining in, as did I. Rows of diggers, JCBs, Komatsu PC26s and various other machines, transports, bulldozers and excavators awaited employment. On the one hand, it was faintly ridiculous: people would queue up to spend five-minutes-a-time attempting to transport soil into a pile, while the next in line would attempt to shift it back again. On the other hand, it offered some of the best fun that boys of all ages can enjoy -and plenty of girls, too. Mechanics were constantly checking on this well-utilised collection of plant machinery, while the park's other staff, many of whom enjoyed the moustache and mullet combo, ensured the safety of the punters. Had I chosen to take up the smoking of cigarettes and employed coarser language, I'd have made a fine addition to the ranks British workmen after the day's digging. 

Growing up in the mid-eighties, little me fantasised about building sites and hard hats and diggers and dumpers, of which I had several toy versions. Sadly, my line of work would take me to very few building sites, but the little lad within revelled in an ambition long unfulfilled.

This in-built desire to dig the earth, to re-arrange, to excavate, to build, to construct, to improve, is all part of our God-given impetus. Adam and Eve were to tend the Garden: this was not weeding the borders and cutting back the petunias. It was a mandate to expand Eden over the whole earth, enlarging that beautiful garden-temple of the Living God. Sadly, Eden was destroyed, and not before we had first been exiled from it. We no longer live in paradise, but that desire to rebuild Eden remains, its call persists, its draw beckons. Sadly, those who reject the God of Eden shall never be admitted to the New Eden; those who build Babels in defiance of God shall be eternally scattered. There are houses and lives being built on the sand, but these shall not remain; those who build on Christ will endure all the floods, waves and winds that life throws at them.

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Genesis 2:15-17