Local Acts Wow In Stage Play: “When Eden Blooms Again

By Em Fergusson

An impressive cast of actors assembled from the Seventh Day Adventist denomination, in both Macon and Atlanta, Georgia, to wow a large audience. The play took place in Atlanta at the Berean Seventh Day Adventist Church. The cast’s performance in the gospel stage play “When Eden Blooms Again,” was welcomed by all who attended the event. The play explores how beautiful the Garden of Eden was in the beginning and how the world was changed by one event.

"The storybegins with a scene from the biblical Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had everything at their disposal; they conversed freely with God, and partook in the richness of Eden. The actors portrayed how beautiful and plentiful the Garden was before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Life, changing the course of life completely.

The transition in the play takes place to portray how the world is viewed today and how it will change once Christ returns. When Adam and Eve fail to obey God and refrain from the Garden of Eden, challenges begin. From the beginning, families are torn apart. The play portrays a modern day husband and his wife who are not communicating. Their daughter has begun to fail her high school classes and dates drug addicts and thugs. They also begin to argue about their relationship while everything seems to fall apart.

Beneath the surface are anecdotes and biblical quotes emphasizing faith values. The wife arguing with her husband is aware she has reacted wrongly towards her husband and daughter, and cries out to God for help. This is the effect playwright and director, Lorraine Lynch desired to portray.

She shares how she came to write the play and talked briefly about its meaning. “I decided [one day] that I needed to talk to God more...” she said. “I found that I wanted to be closer to Him and the only way I knew how to do that was to go to the source...Read the Bible and listen for Him speaking.”

The moment of inspiration came to her when she went through the word of God. “It blew my mind what happens when you meditate on the Word and are open to the Spirit of God leading you through it,” she said. “I literally saw in my mind as I read each word, each line, each paragraph...God painting our world and then creating and placing Adam and Eve in it.”

“When Eden Blooms Again” is not merely a play subsisting on a family torn apart that is brought together again. When the husband loses his job and finally hears his wife tell him their daughter is in need of a father who not only provides financially, but ought to be there spiritually as well, he experiences a change of heart. In turn, the wife also changes her attitude towards her daughter and apologizes for her actions.

The challenges faced by each character in the play pinpoints the need for a deeper and more fulfilling spiritual experience in the world we live in. Lynch’s directorial approach to her written play lies in the value of meditating and praying to God, similar to what she experienced before she wrote the play.

In the end, the family decides to return to church and turn their lives fully over to God. The audience’s interaction with the cast provided an interesting and deeply fulfilling experience. When the family “goes” to church, the cast members join the audience and sits back as the preacher leads the congregation in an inspirational praise and worship service. At the end of the worship service, panels are drawn apart to reveal a dozen angels that mime to the worshipful hymnal, ‘We Shall Behold Him.’ The thematic song symbolizes that despite the trials we face here on earth, we shall overcome. Lynch describes the blooming of Eden once again by stating: “All these issues, parents and children fighting, husband and wife not relating well to each other, sibling rivalry, heartaches, barriers and our sinful nature will be laid in the open…but in the end if we run this race with patience (the way God wants us to do it) we will all be there to see with our eyes His soon coming and the Restoration of Eden.”

The play came to an end, but the worship did not. The Elder of Berean Adventist Church stepped forward and asked the audience to join hands to worship once again in song. “When Eden Blooms Again” is a play that will be shown again.