February 2 - Adam and Eve

February 2 - Adam and Eve

Am I reading this right? Why yes, I am. You know, I have always assumed that Adam was out wandering the garden when the serpent tempted Eve and that when he showed up, she got all seductive on him and practically begged him to sin. Poor Adam was so overwhelmed by her evil ways that he couldn't withstand temptation and so ... caused the entire race of man to fall into sin. But, it was Eve's fault first. Right?

Well ... kind of. But read that verse closely. Genesis 6:7 "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it."

Four little words jumped out of that verse at me - who was with her. Adam was not wandering around the garden and then showed up, startling Eve while she was doing something wicked. He was with her! He could have told the serpent to leave her alone (which I would hope that any good, chivalrous husband might do). He could have reminded her that God had said 'no.' But, he let her fail and then he participated in the failure right along beside her.

Now, you and I both know that the story of man would have been very different had this not happened at the beginning of time. You and I might not even have existed (my mother always reminded me of the negation of my existence when I whined that she hadn't married the wealthy Boston doctor instead of the poor Iowa minister).

God had a plan to set in motion and we are at the beginning of that plan. Those two original creations of His didn't make life easy for the rest of us, but we are stuck with the story and I'm thankful that God's ending works it all out.

This sin made a couple of things happen. Eve was going to labor in childbirth and Adam was going to have to work for a living. It's interesting that we didn't hear about the incredible pain of labor in Genesis 4 when Cain and Abel were born. After the preamble to this story, I would have been prepared to read all of the gory details, but they kept it clean.

All sorts of humorous thoughts go through my mind when I read things, some are inappropriate to relate and others are just on the fence. Long before ultrasounds could tell the sex of a child before birth, parents just had to wait. Well, as proud as many dad's are when they realize they have produced a son, Eve was just as proud. I've skipped this verse over and over in my reading, but right away, when she gave birth to Cain, Eve said, "With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man." (Genesis 4:1) Another translation of that verse is that she 'acquired' a man. Awesome! She looked down at the child and was glad to have a son.

We meet Abel and Cain as they have grown older. Cain brought 'some' of the fruits of the soil to the Lord while Abel brought the best to the Lord. I wonder how Adam and Eve felt about this. Was it their job to raise their children? Did they do it well? What was going through their hearts and minds when their eldest son didn't believe he needed to bring his very best to the Lord? And what did they think when they realized that he had murdered his brother?

Their first-born son. The one that Eve was so proud to have born.

When Adam was 130 years old, he and Eve had another son, Seth. Eve named him that because God had granted her another son after Abel's death. Genesis 4 gets us all caught up in the story of the death and Cain's lies along with the Lord's frustration with him, but it isn't until the end of the chapter that we realize how painful that had to have been for Eve. There weren't a lot of people on the earth at the time that her second son was killed. Death wasn't something that they had a lot of experience at handling, but there it was, one of the first signs of sin growing in the world.

But wait, the story isn't over yet. In fact, though death entered the world on Adam's watch, that too can be redeemed.

"For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." (1 Cor. 15:22)

The story has just begun.