In this final year of my seven-year journey back home to the garden which is our original paradise abode in which we were meant to live, I finally arrived at a place I had heard about but never been to and often wondered what it was like or if it truly existed at all. It is a highly respected place where those who have kept the faith and persevered through life maintaining their integrity and trust in God go to meet. It is a place not easy to get to, but its rewards are amazing and most importantly eternal. It is the place known as the city gate. It is the final stop before entering the garden.

     Early on in this final year of my journey the Holy Spirit led me to read proverbs chapter thirty-one every day for six straight months. It is an amazing chapter of wisdom, and the characteristics of what God deems as noble men and women. It took me several days of reading it before I could understand why God had put such a task on me for the next six months, but then it hit me. I had always heard of the “proverbs thirty-one woman,” because the chapter speaks in detail of her character traits and refers to her as “a wife of noble character.” Not to mention that she is about impossible to find. But the chapter also speaks of her husband and where he can be found, and that is at the ‘city gate.’ You will find him there among the elders of the land, where he is respected as a “man of noble character.” And what will you find him doing there at the city gate? He is singing the praises of his wife of noble character! Why? Because she has earned it by becoming the woman God has called her to be. And his reward for becoming the man God has called him to be is, “the wife of noble character.”

     God does not give His best for a spouse to just anyone. He gives His best to the best. That is part of the journey back home, to become the person that God has created us to be. His version of us is always the best version, God does not, nor should we settle for anything less. Striving to become a person of noble character comes along with our desire to get back home to the garden, they go hand in hand. You can not achieve one without the other. To make it the garden one must first arrive at “the gate”! The place where men and woman of noble character congregate and prepare for life in the garden. Our original home was called ‘The Garden of Eden,” Eden means ‘gateway.’ The city gate is therefore the gateway to the garden. One can only enter the garden through the ‘gateway’! Becoming a person of noble character is mandatory for garden living because arriving back home is not just about arriving, it is about becoming!!!

     Now I say to all of you who have been following this journey on the blog up until now, if for whatever reason you feel as if you are still in the wasteland of life and have not begun your journey home to the garden, let me send out to you a call to action. God never intended anyone to live in the wasteland, not to become the best version of themselves. He wants to rescue every person ever to be born from the wasteland and bring them back home to the garden. But He will not force us. We have to say yes to the journey! This call to action comes from the book of 2^nd Kings in the story of the four lepers. They too were in a search for life as they sat at the city gate and pondered what to do to survive the famine, they were in. They were desperate just as every soul in the wasteland is desperate. So, they posed to themselves the question I would pose to everyone reading this that is desperate: “Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why sit here until we die?” That is the exact question God is posing to you at this very moment! Why sit here in the wasteland waiting to die? Why not take the journey to the garden and live? Why not say yes to becoming the person God has intended you to become and live where you were intended to live? What are you going to do?

Dario L. Perla