Through the dark shadows of the universe, the meteor pierced earth’s solar system just past the red planet, then accelerated with the gravitational pull of the earth. It drew nearer. Like an arrow, balanced and true in its fletching, it was destined to hit its mark.
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The deed done, the couple bowed at the feet of their Creator… bowed in heartbreaking despair as they heard His last words of judgment.
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The indictment that came from the One who brought them such joy and love was despairingly hard to hear. “Adam, when I took you from the desert and placed you in the Garden and then gave you a helpmate, I was very pleased with what I had done. It was then that I directed you to be fruitful and to multiply and to replenish the earth.1 I showed you the two exceptional trees in the Garden – of one, the tree of life, you could eat freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you were not to eat, for in that day your spirit would recoil in death. Now, because you listened to Eve and ate of the forbidden tree, I give you this judgment. I will not curse you, as I did the serpent, rather you will now find that the abundance of the earth will withdraw its bounty from you. You will find tilling the soil your greatest effort.
"Eve,” the Creator said with knowing concern in his eyes, “It will now be in bone breaking labor and pain that you bring forth a child. However, the excruciating pain of bearing a child will soon be forgotten as you hold your little one to suckle at your breast. I further decree that you will be frustrated in desiring to be at the very center of your husband’s attention. You will try to rule over him, but he will be weary from his distracted effort to bring life from the unyielding soil.” ... Just then, the holy couple felt a violent tremor from deep within the earth. In a panic, they raised their heads and looked around. Adrenalin was overtaking their senses, making them dizzy and disoriented. The Creator was still with them, but in their frenzy, they lost their awareness of him. Suddenly, the earth rumbled in a terrifying way, knocking them to the ground. “Adam!” Eve screamed as she tried to stand to her feet. “Adam, look. Look at the trees and the brush. Everything... everything is sinking. Adam, everything is being sucked into the, and whatever is swallowing them is coming right toward us!” Adam grabbed Eve by her hand and yelled, “We must run, Eve, or we will be swallowed up like the trees!” He pulled her along, away from falling limbs and the sinking ground. What was going on?! Suddenly, they were lifted off their feet by a hot blast of wind, as though an unseen guardian had lifted them up and over a rocky ridge. “No! Oh, my God, no!” Adam cried, suddenly finding himself cast down, his face shoved into the dirt. The animal skins God gave them to cover their nakedness were not much more than meager protection from the fall they took. They lay there, faces in the dirt where the blast of wind had cast them down. When Adam looked up, he could just barely make out where the gateway to the Garden had been. Now, in what seemed to be whirling swords, he saw flaming fissures of fire shooting up from the ground. Quickly helping each other to their feet, they ran with desperation toward what was once the entrance to the Garden. As they ran, what they saw as blazing swords began to disappear from sight as the blasting heat of the storm intensified. They were terrified when they could no longer make out the entrance to the great Garden! Their screams of alarm were barely audible above the howling storm. In their hysterical frenzy, each ran to where they thought the entrance had been. As terror upon terror mounted, they became lost from each other, and like thunder in a vacuum, Eve screamed the name of Adam, only to have her words pierce the storm like broken shards of glass. She covered her face with her matted and dirty hair, which had once been a beautiful flaxen-gold. Head down; eyes barely exposed; she was forced to move in whatever direction the wind drove her. Finally, she stumbled into a ravine where she dropped in pitiful exhaustion. She burrowed her bruised body into the hard dirt like a desperate little desert creature. All she wanted to do at that moment was disappear, or at least fade into vast nothingness. She pulled herself up into a tight ball and hugged her knees, listening to the roar of the storm overhead. It continued, unabated, for what seemed like hours - hours that gave her time to think about how she and Adam came to find themselves in such desperate circumstances. Her ears still burned and her heart broke as she remembered Adam saying to the Creator, “The woman you gave me, enticed me, and I did eat of the forbidden fruit.” How was she to know? How was she to grasp the meaning of “In the day you eat of the fruit from the forbidden tree, you will surely die.” Die… What did that mean? She had no experience with which to compare it until… until she ate the fruit! At that moment, the clear moral distinction between right and wrong became blurred. Everything became emotionally subjective to Eve's feelings. She and Adam no longer saw their untainted glorified bodies, bodies that radiated with iridescent, shimmering light, but rather their focus changed. They became focused on their physical nakedness, which they tried to hide by covering up their bodies. They wanted to get back to being able to see the simplicity of each other’s souls, but now only confusion reigned in their minds. ... “My babies, what about my babies?!” and she began to cry again. Her cries turned to dark, sorrowful moans as she rocked back and forth like a mother trying to comfort a child that had gone missing from her arms. Lost in the painful delusion, she was unaware when Adam found her. She jerked in fright at his touch. Tenderly, he unwrapped the matted hair covering her dirty, tear-streaked face. When he lifted her chin, she could not look at him, her shame more than she could bear. This, how could he have brought this upon the woman he so cherished, the very treasure that was "bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh?" They sat holding each other in stunned silence, barely able to breathe. The air smelled of putrid rottenness. Eve pushed away from him and suddenly started retching violently. Adam felt such empathy for her. He completely understood what the pain of all these dreadful hours was doing to her. It was nearly driving him mad! He felt so out of control… emasculated at every turn in trying help this woman he so disparately loved. He had done this! He was the one responsible. ... He remembered the moment he first awakened to see this new helpmate of his. He had been enjoying watching the abundant diversity of animals, especially the bounding and prancing deer around him. Oh, how they loved to frolic in the vast flowered meadows, joyfully leaping as a hart. All the creatures seemed to have a partner, ones they could nuzzle up against or bed down with in the coolness of the night. That realization created a sad longing in his heart. Where was his partner? Where was the one he could take into his arms? Not long after the thought, he remembered falling into a deep sleep, where his dream of a partner, created near to his own heart, intensified. When he awoke, he marveled at how real the dream seemed and what pleasure he took in recalling it. Then, as he stretched and raised his arms, he felt her - felt her snuggled against his aching side. Why he seemed so sore, he did not know, but whatever bruising it was, her fragrance erased what he knew to be his own. He was no longer alone, and his heart rejoiced. Slowly awakening to the morning and her new life, the woman opened her eyes, eyes like shining green meadows sparkling with tiny rays of sunlight around the deep well of her black pupils. Without understanding why Adam became completely mesmerized. It was as though she could gaze into his very soul. He never felt more revealed. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t speak. He could only stare at the beauty before him and listen to his pounding heart. ... When God came to them in the early morning light, He looked upon the woman he had created from Adam's side and said that His new creation was, indeed, “very good!” The Creator then told the man and woman that they, like the other creatures in the garden, were to be fruitful and multiply. God was very precise concerning the unique relationship He had created. He would never be persuaded to change the primary directive he gave to His man and the woman He created for him. For all times to come, "a man would leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two would be united into one." ... And the two are made one.
One flesh, one life they have become. Here in the presence of God, their vows they have shared, And We, We are their witnesses. Let's send them forth in joy, their lives to fulfill. They are blessed by the Father, according to His perfect will. ...And the two are made one! Adam was so thrilled with that pronouncement by God. Now they, too, would have children of their own flesh that would bring great delight to their hearts.
Would they be faithful to the Creator’s command? Indeed, they would be. Over-enthusiastically, Adam exclaimed that they would have multitudes of children! The coolness of the evening came, and the heavenly night-lights danced in the sky. Adam pondered the name he would give |
his life’s partner, and then decided that he would call her Eve for she was to be the mother of all like them. In the warmth and passion of the night, his treasured partner conceived the first of their many children.
Adam and Eve honored their Creator by the love they showed for one another. Faithful to God’s design they were one flesh, cleaving only to each other for the tonicity of children they would bear. The pair of complements made whole in one flesh, without the one the other was incomplete. ... The reflection over, Adam well knew that he would have to, once again, as he had in the days before his Creator placed him in the great Garden, use his desert-wise skills now that he had lost the ease of life in the Garden. It would not be easy, but at least he had an idea of where to begin. Suddenly, the earth gave a great shudder knocking them out of the ravine. Dizzy and disoriented, they staggered and fell. Then, another blast of foul hot wind hit them, blowing them along like tumbling dirt clods. In feeble effort, they tried to protect their heads and faces from battering debris, but to no avail. Without warning, they had the breath knocked out of them when they slammed up against a giant boulder. Then, as if a powerful hand grabbed them, hoisting them up and over the boulder, they landed on top of more bruising rubble. The enormous rock gave them some degree of protection as the storm continued unabated overhead. Then, he felt Eve’s hand on his shoulder. The one, with her persuasive, enticing words was speechless. Words were to no avail in the powerful roar of wind anyway. They hunkered up together against the mighty rock, which became their fortress in the relentless storm. Distraught of heart, Adam found himself talking to God, as he had never done before. “Lord, where are you? Do you not see the great calamity that we are facing? What is happening? Lord, come quickly to save us!” Then out of the storm, a still, small voice, took command of his mind. “Adam, surely you remember the command I gave you in the Garden. I was clear in telling you that you could eat your fill of the tree of life, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you must not eat, for on that very day you would die. Adam, from now on decay and death will consume your body. You are no longer immortal in your flesh. You must know, dear one; it was out of my great mercy and love that I drove you from the Garden lest you ate of the tree of life in your fallen state, and be eternally doomed. “Be assured, my most beloved ones, I created a plan from the foundation of the world where you, above all creatures, would be given one of the greatest gifts… the gift of choice. You now have a choice to love me or reject me. To love me will grant you all the benefits of my kingdom... instant access to my heart, an eternity in my heavenly paradise, and most of all, the unbroken fellowship of my heart. “To choose not to love me will remove you from my embracing hand of protection, making you a victim of Satan’s wicked and deadly schemes. May you be wise to know this: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in Hell.”2 All of this may be too much for you to understand now, but hear me clearly, Satan, your life’s enemy, roams about the earth like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. I created him. I created all things. I created light, and I created darkness. I also created Satan to facilitate my plan. He is and always will be, subject to me. “It was part of my plan. Unless Satan fell from my grace, you would never know my full redemptive power. No longer the angel of light, he became, instead, the arch-demon of darkness. I allowed him in my beautiful Garden because I could not force you to make a choice. That would defeat my purpose. Your decision to choose me - to love me, had to be freely given. Though your life is in a death countdown now, you will have all eternity to reflect on the perfection of my plan for your salvation. Even when you fall to the wicked schemes of Satan and his hordes of fallen angels, you have but to turn away from him, humble your heart, and I will save you. This plan is for you and all the children that issue from you.”3 ... Suddenly, the reverie broken, Adam saw a small herd of large, bloated dead animals with coarse, striped hair. He instantly made for two of them and dragged them through the dirt to their massive stone shelter. Then ran out and hauled in two more. Looking around and finding a couple of sharp-edged rocks, he skinned the animals, and Eve scrapped the inside skin. The odor was horrific, causing Eve to gag several times, but she kept to her task. It wasn’t the best of circumstances, but they needed protection from flying debris. It took several hours. They worked hurriedly to get the job done before they could assemble the garments with long leather strands cut from the skin that had covered the animal’s limbs. Using one of the animal's long, sharp, pointed canine teeth, Adam pierced holes along the sides and shoulders of the skins, just as he had done with the fig leaves. Then, however, the fig leaves were to hide their shame before God. This time they were for their protection. Eve forced the long strands through the holes, joining the front and back together. In all, they used six of the animals for their garments. The skin of the last two animals was used as capes to protect their backs and arms. Beauce the storm was unrelenting, Adam left the hollowed out skulls attached to the skins to protect their heads. Eve looked at her new garment and said, “You can’t possibly be serious. Really? Adam, you just can’t expect me to put that on my body. It reeks of the foulest odor, and besides that, I can’t move in it. It’s too stiff! Furthermore, there is no chance in this lifetime that I’m going to put that hairy skull on my head. No! No! No! No way is happening!” That’s when Adam thought to use some of the animal fat, rubbed into the hide, to soften the stiffness. Eve hated the feel of the skin next to hers, but she realized she had no other choice. She insisted on draping the cape over her head, tied with a leather band. With the wind always blowing, the horrific odor, which made her want to vomit, was somewhat dissipated. Suddenly another burst of superheated dust and ash flew overhead. They were enormously grateful for their roughly fabricated garments. They certainly didn’t have the coolness and smoothness of the fig-leaf aprons hastily sewn together in the Garden when their eyes became clouded with sensuality, and they realized they were naked… naked not only in the flesh, but also in heart and spirit. Every thought, every consideration was laid bare for each other to see and that made them feel completely vulnerable. From that moment on, they would begin to find ways to layer themselves with masks, hiding their fear. Finally, the blasting gusts of wind stopped. Now there was a steady, but moderate wind out of the east that kept the dirt stirred up, making it hard to breathe. As well, the rising smoke from many small brush fires kept the air filled with acrid grimy particles. Still, they pushed up against the boulder, afraid to move. They were in complete shock and disoriented. Their constant companion was a nagging fear that repeatedly questioned whether or not they would survive. Making sense of any of this was beyond them. Again, Adam heard the voice of God speak within him. God's voice seemed so loud. It had to be so that Adam could hear it over his thundering fears! Under the shadow of the massive rock and with the utmost humility the two bowed before their gracious Creator and asked for forgiveness - forgiveness for choosing their way, their will, over the Creator’s. Yes, they agreed, God was right. They didn’t have any idea what the consequences of their actions would bring. Not a clue! They never had to give a second thought to consequences! This was all so new to them. They were so confused! Yet, they knew in their hearts that they were entirely wrong and God was right. Walking in their self-directed way brought about nothing but trauma and despair. That’s all the Creator wanted - their confession. Right there. Right then. He perfected his new companions. Again, Adam and Eve made a choice, a choice stand in agreement with God, not to be self-willed and rebellious, but to try their best to make choices that honored God’s way as the wisest course to follow. With that acknowledgment came the protective covering of God. That gave Adam and Eve some solace, in that all they had ever known was gone. The entire landscape of their lives had changed. They were hot, dehydrated, dirty, and covered in their own filth. “Oh, God, why did your penalty have to be so great?” God, the Father, spoke again, “Because the plan I have to save your eternal souls is greater still.” Suddenly, to confirm the extent of their peril, a last blast of wind hurled a deadly desert snake over the boulder and around Eve’s neck. Her scream was that of a woman gone mad. With lightning fast reflexes, Adam grabbed the snake, whipped it around, breaking its neck. Then, he threw it to the ground where Eve triumphantly crushed its head with the heel of her foot! There it lay, reminding them of the sly-speaking serpent in the Garden, its black tongue extending out of its bleeding mouth, as though ready to hiss more lies… “You will not surely die! You will not surely die!”4 Like the serpent in the Garden, puffed up in its evil pride, the dead snake lay puffed and bloated.5 |
Endnotes for Chapter 2
1 www.friendsofsocotra.org – The Dragon’s Blood tree
2 Holy Bible, Matthew 10:28 (ESV)
3 Holy Bible, Acts 2:39
4 Holy Bible, Genesis 3:4
5 www.en.m.wikipedia.org – Puff Adder, bitis arietans. It is a venomous viper that causes the most snakebite fatalities throughout Arabia and Africa. It has super-orbital bones that to my imagination resemble horns, and its scales with dark inset circles look like hundreds of eyes.
As a further note on the paragraph, my husband, Gary, and I recalled a time when he was based with Continental Micronesia in Guam. Brown tree snakes had stowed away in the wheel housings of some planes and took up residence in Guam, decimating their bird population by eating the eggs. There were many stories told about encounters with the snakes. One we both vividly remembered was a time when the wife of another pilot noticed that her awning was full of rain from a monsoon. She grabbed it by the edges to shake the water out, when she gave it a heave, suddenly, brown tree snake wrapped itself around her neck! I’m certain her terrifying scream was heard all over the island!
1 www.friendsofsocotra.org – The Dragon’s Blood tree
2 Holy Bible, Matthew 10:28 (ESV)
3 Holy Bible, Acts 2:39
4 Holy Bible, Genesis 3:4
5 www.en.m.wikipedia.org – Puff Adder, bitis arietans. It is a venomous viper that causes the most snakebite fatalities throughout Arabia and Africa. It has super-orbital bones that to my imagination resemble horns, and its scales with dark inset circles look like hundreds of eyes.
As a further note on the paragraph, my husband, Gary, and I recalled a time when he was based with Continental Micronesia in Guam. Brown tree snakes had stowed away in the wheel housings of some planes and took up residence in Guam, decimating their bird population by eating the eggs. There were many stories told about encounters with the snakes. One we both vividly remembered was a time when the wife of another pilot noticed that her awning was full of rain from a monsoon. She grabbed it by the edges to shake the water out, when she gave it a heave, suddenly, brown tree snake wrapped itself around her neck! I’m certain her terrifying scream was heard all over the island!