BIBLE STORIES FOR GROWN UPS
Jesse Adams

THE EDEN STORY
Genesis 1-3


Once upon a time, a very, very long time ago...when the world was still flat... as it was believed to be until about five hundred years ago...way back in the time before there were mountains or valleys or lakes or trees...it was dark. I mean really dark! A deep, black darkness covered everything...all the earth, and there was not a living creature to be found. As a matter of fact, there wasn't a living creature!

And God squinted into the darkness of that vast, formless void and decided there was really no point in squinting...so He said: "Let there be light"...and there was light...not from sun or moon, but the light of God Himself shining upon that vast, ugly, barren wasteland.

But God didn't like "ugly," so he decided to shape the world up...which He did...with sun and moon and stars and lakes and rivers and trees and hills and mountains and all kinds of pretty scenery.

But God still wasn't satisfied with what he saw. He wanted a special place...of special beauty...so He planted Himself a garden...in Eden...in the East, which would be Mesopotamia, the ancient Babylonia...and the modern Iraq!

But the garden God planted was not like the gardens we might have...full of turnips and radishes and rutabagas and okra and tomatoes and squash all burned to a nice crisp.

His was a beautiful garden...full of fruit trees of every description...and flowers and exotic plants ...and all of it was good to eat or smell or look at or all three...and all of it was watered by a river that ran through the garden...and later branched into four rivers...three of which are the Nile, the Tigris and the Euphrates. The fourth one, we don't know the name. It must have since dried up.

And God looked at His garden...and liked it... but decided something was still missing. There was no one in the world to enjoy it...so He took his potter's wheel...went down by the river and scooped up a hand full of mud from the river bank,...plopped the mud on the spinning wheel and then huddled over it for a time until He had shaped what looked for all the world like a little gingerbread man.

Then He carefully lifted that still-wet, clay figure cautiously up to His face...placed its head just in front of His lips and gently went: "whoosh", and that little clay figure...made from the dust of the earth...with the breath of God breathed into its nostrils...became a living bundle of appetites... which is what the Hebrew word we usually translate as "soul" or "creature"...actually means.

Very gently then, God stood that freshly created man, whom He called "Adam," (which means "man,") down on the solid soil of the Garden of Eden...and Adam started immediately checking out the garden the way a child checks out a carnival.

He couldn't look fast enough at all the varieties of trees and flowers. He tasted the fruit...swam in the river...smelled the flowers...lolled in the sun ...and then did it all over again until...before long...he became tired...and bored...and lonely.

And God noticed that Adam was sort of drooping around without too much enthusiasm...and decided that Adam needed something, or someone...to help pass the time.

So God made chickens and cows and rhinosoresses and lambs and elephants and birds and chiggers and mosquitoes and perch and catfish...and every variety of bird and insect and animal and fish...and then told Adam to name them...and whatever Adam called them, that's what they were...and still are!

Well, Adam really did his job well, which is fortunate for us...or else our pet poodle might look like a giraffe...and our canary might sing like a bull elephant, but even so, after Adam had finished naming and getting acquainted with all the animals and birds and fish and insects...he began drooping around again;...God noticed again and decided to fix that condition once and for all.

He caused a deep sleep to overcome Adam...and when Adam was in the proper level of anesthesia, God performed the first surgical procedure ever to take place in His new Creation.

He removed one of Adam's ribs, closed up his side and then, this time, instead of using His potter's wheel, God used his carpentry tools. He chiseled and planed and shaped and sanded until He had built a woman...and He stood her up in front of Adam...woke Adam up...and Adam stretched and yawned and squinted through his still sleepy eyes until the image before him became clear, and then he said: "Wow!...it can't get any better than this!"...

But it did...for soon he heard God say: "Go forth and multiply to fill the earth and subdue it...and have dominion."

Then, He told them the garden was theirs to enjoy...that they could do what they wanted, when they wanted, if they wanted. There were no limitations, no list of rules and regulations... just one minor restriction:...they could eat fruit from any tree or bush in the garden except two in the center of the garden...which, by the way, if we took literally, would make vegetarians of us all.