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 whee, 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. |