As a minor poet, the pastor doesn't simply tell people to be satisfied with their limited lives but instead helps them to find the joy and sacred purposes to these limits. Some of the things that are missing from the garden are good and certainly desired. When a couple discovers that they cannot have children, when a spouse is buried, or when a terminal disease is discovered, it isn't helpful for the pastor to point to all of the other blessings in a person's life. What is helpful is for the pastor to walk into the sorrow in search of the sufficient grace of God. Anyone who finds more of the steadfast love of God from which we are never separated has found something far greater than that which is missing from the garden. And it is for that grace that we are most grateful.
M Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet, pp.96,97
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