Creation

Adam and Eve
by
Karl C. Evans
2007

There was a time God breathed into the Man the breath of life. The first human came to know what it was to be alive. There was a garden to explore. There were stars to watch. There were clouds to consider. There were all good things to do.

But God wanted to share creation with the Man. God wanted to share not only creation itself. God chose to share even creative activity and emotion with the created one. Almost – everything was to be shared. Sharing is very good.

So God paraded all the animals in front of the man to see what the Man would name them. This sharing of names would be very good. They could laugh a little, and dream a little.

One animal the man called `Lion'. Another, the Man called `Dog'. Yet another the Man called `hippo – '...no, not `hippopotamus'. That one he called `rhinoceros'. It looked more like a rhinoceros than a hippopotamus. But there are hippopotamuses and rhinoceri – or is it hippopotami and rhinoceroses?

Finally, all the animals had been named. God looked around, carefully. God saw that Man was alone, even yet. That was not good. It was the desire of God that all things should be good for Man.

God sensed the loneliness of Man. God knew that feeling of loneliness, coming up from deep within.

You see, God always wanted someone to love. God had a great desire to fulfill the great capacity for love God felt in the sacred heart. This love, the desire to do for another whatever would be best for them, should be fulfilled. It was the Master's plan. The great over-flowing source that welled up from within the heart of the one called God should be fulfilled. God should find a lover.

It was God's notion that one day there would be another. A being would come to life to whom God could relate the sacred name. That sacred name, given the Creator by the Creator, was the most important word of all Creation. It cried out the very essence of the Divine Being – `I-Will-Risk-My-Very-Being-On-Your-Behalf'. "I will do everything I can for you even though it may cost me everything!"

In Hebrew, we call this name "Yahweh". It is the word which speaks of this willingness to sacrifice for us. This Yahweh is the One you and I call `God'.

God thought and thought about the man, Adam. One night, Yahweh helped Adam sleep a very deep sleep. God gently took a rib from Adam's side. God carefully carried it down by the river bank.

Then God began to pack mud around the rib until God had created Woman, a person of beauty and strength and sensitivity, but different from Adam. From that day to this women have tried to improve on God's work of beauty by using more and more mud packs.

God created Eve to receive the same love that Adam received, and to share love both with God and with Adam. This was the first love triangle. It was very good.

Now Adam and Eve made their home in a beautiful garden. In the midst of that garden rose a bubbling spring. This spring never stopped flowing. It overflowed like the cup of God's love.
From the bubbling waters of that spring rose the headwaters of the four rivers of the earth. The rivers were teeming with fish and frogs and water-skippers and crawdads.

Between the banks of the rivers rose all the vegetation of the earth. There were pine trees and poplars, bamboo and tumbleweeds, bluegrass and roses.

As Adam and Eve stood on the bank of one of those rivers in the early morning, they could survey all that God had done in ordering Creation. The splendor of Yahweh's creation on their behalf filled their hearts with awe and reverence. Their voices would sound beyond the range of the garden as they sang together:

O Lord my god, when I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds thy hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Then sings my soul, my saviour God to Thee
How great Thou art. How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, my saviour God to Thee
How great Thou art. How great Thou art.
(Boberg, Carl. Translated by Stuart A Hine. "How Great Thou Art" (Nashville: The Methodist Publishing House 1966)

But not all life held only a sense of majesty and awe. There was a sense of closeness, of warmth, of caring between God and Adam and Eve. And fun. They joked about the size God had made the giraffe's neck. They laughed at boxing kangaroos and they cuddled koala bears.

Occasionally a light-hearted mood would come over Adam and he would sing a little song that has become a theme song for politicians and television evangelists.

O Lord, it's hard to be humble
When you're perfect in every way.
I can't wait to look in a mirror.
I get better lookin' each day.
To know me is to love me....
(Oh, Lord, It’s Hard To Be Humble)

And just as God smiled often in the process of ordering Creation, now God smiled again. This was not a smile such as you might see on the evangelist who just saw a thousand-dollar bill in the collection plate. It was not the smile on the face of Grandma when Johnny breaks a centuries-old vase.

God smiled that deep loving and caring smile. God enjoyed the openness and humor and the loving nature of these Ones for whom God was prepared to lay the Sacred Existence on the line. Everything was shared, and open, lit by the radiance of their relationship.

In the evening the three of them would walk arm in arm around the garden, talking about every little event of the day. God relished every moment of this. It was a fulfillment of creative love between them as they walked and talked. This little doe deer was now apparently pregnant.

This rabbit had moved to a new home, a home not threatened by the fox or by the dog.

And when the evening was done, as the fireflies sparkled across their path, Adam and Eve would make their farewell with Yahweh – a hug and a "Good night!" – and settle into good, sound, restful sleep.

Now in the midst of the garden stood two trees. Yahweh had told Adam and Eve that they were not to eat the fruit that abounded on these trees. God had not really given them a reason for the prohibition. There was nothing but trust and openness between them. If God said they were not to eat the fruit of the trees, they didn't eat the fruit of the trees. That was all. Period.

But inside Eve something was gnawing, gnawing the way a tiny termite soon destroys and devours a mansion. A question, a wondering, a searching.....

One night, after the evening walk with God and while the fireflies still made their minute torches seen through the garden, Eve spoke. Quietly, almost with a touch of pain.

"Adam, I've been thinking. You know those two trees near the spring? The ones with the beautiful fruit that God has said we are supposed to avoid?"

Now Adam, lying there with Eve close beside, had nearly gone to sleep in the stillness, but now he was wide awake. Something in Eve's voice warned him of things to come. Something dreaded, something....

"Yes, Eve, I know them."

"Adam, I wonder how they would taste?"

"We'll probably never know, Eve."

"Adam, I wonder what might happen if we ate some of the fruit? I mean, really, what would happen?"

"Well, I really don't know. I cannot imagine that God would let anything hurt us, except when we stub our toe or something."

Again there was a long silence before Eve spoke again. Adam knew his thoughts were echoing hers. "Let's go have some of that fruit. What could it hurt, if God doesn't find out?"
"I suppose that's true. What could it hurt?"

By morning, as the light began to appear over the horizon, over the top of the very tree from which they had eaten, Adam and Eve had still not slept. Together they had lain in the darkness frozen by the awareness of their deeds. The fruit had been sweet, and warm, and had felt good in their stomachs.

But now with that satisfaction, Adam and Eve lay together, close, but could not touch in the night.

Their hearts were cold, and the sweat that poured from their brows was not from the heat. Oh, they were still alive. They now knew there was no great immediate death awaiting them. The tree was not poison. It brought no physical pain.

Their problem was not something the fruit of the tree had brought. They had brought it themselves. They had done something only with themselves. They had shared an event with each other. They knew some moments of time they could not share with their Creator....

This God, who had created them just in order to have someone to receive the love...

This God, who had begun to fulfill the Name that was to be the Divine Calling Card...

This God who loved them and relished every living moment with them...

This God, who risked the very existence of Creation on the potential relationship between Man, and Woman, and God....

They could no longer share every moment with God.

In the early light their eyes met and then turned away. For the first time they saw each other as they really were...unfaithful, untrusting, and...apart. They could not bear the thought of having the other see them in their separation. They turned away from each other.

Through the whole day they hid, afraid to be seen by the other. How they longed for the touch of the other, longed for the words from the other that would make everything all right. Both listening. Both afraid.

The Garden was quiet. No laughter. No raucous singing of being humble. Even the birds didn't sing. The pigs didn't grunt. The lions didn't even purr. Even the earthworms tried to quiet their gentle movements....

In the evening, God came to the center of the garden, knowing something was wrong.

"Adam. Eve."

"Adam! Eve!"

"Adam!! Eve!!"

The words rang and hissed through the garden, filling every clearing among the trees just as the thunder after a close lightning strike. When they heard the voice of God, Adam and Eve took some leaves from the fig tree and made clothes that hid themselves.

"Adam!! Eve!!"

Adam and Eve heard, and came, and looked down. They studied the ground in front of God.
Now perhaps what God did next was the second hardest thing God ever did. But there was no choice. Adam and Eve had chosen to be apart from God, to have events and thoughts and dreams in their lives that they could not and would not share with their Creator and Lover.

Because God was betting everything, risking it all on them, God gave them what they had chosen.

As they walked toward the gate, God did what could be done. God took flower petals from the vines and added them to the clothing they had made for each other.

"You will need all the beauty in your life you can get. No one need ever see your shame, or your apartness. If it is your choice, no one need ever see your alienation from each other or from me. Those who come after you, if they choose to be apart from me, it will not be because of your example. It will be because they choose it for themselves. But I will go with you, and be near to you, unless you tell me to leave."

And Adam and Eve walked out the gates of the garden. Their eyes were down, blurred and unseeing. As they walked, the whole garden of trees and plants and grass and animals and bugs and birds sang a prayer for them:

Someone's crying, Lord, come by here.
Someone's crying, Lord, come by here.
Someone's crying, Lord, come by here.
Oh, Lord, come by here. (Kum Ba Yah)