Back to Eden, Part 2

She had no memory of the beginning.  Not really.  All she knew is that she simply was.  There, suddenly, next to the sleeping creature she came to know as Adam – her beloved, her husband.  She hadn’t known till later how it had happened, that the Lord had fashioned her from Adam’s rib.  She remembered opening her eyes and stretching her limbs for the first time.  She was inspecting what she came to know later as “hands” when the sleeping creature – “man” – woke up beside her.  They looked at one another in wonder for a long time.  Then, the next things they knew, He was there with them, explaining it all.  She had been fashioned from Adam’s side – “bone of my bone,” as Adam summarized it.

            Oh, those days in the garden.  There was no way to describe it.  She and Adam had tried to put words to it, to pass down some sense of that life to the generations that came after them.  That was the life all were meant to live, but only she and Adam had been able to experience it firsthand.  Everything was so vivid and alive in that place.  Colors were brighter, fragrances stronger, the sensations of warmth and softness and comfort much more than anyone had every experienced since.  That place was LIFE – life the way the Father had always intended it.  Animals came at their beck and call.  The lion lay down with the lamb.  Nights were not the cold, desolate times they were in this realm, but a soft, quiet, sleepy version of the vibrant day.  And the ease of it all!  Oh, there was work to be sure, but it was fulfilling work that brought strength, not drained it.  She and Adam tended the garden together, cared for the animals, leapt among the flowers and the grass, danced with beams of sunlight.  But beyond all that, all the sensation and joy and life around them, was the relationship they had had with the Father.

            To have the constant presence of the Lord was beyond what could be described in mere words.  To “walk” with Him, be in His glorious light, have access to Him all the time.  To see Him first thing in the morning and walk with Him in the cool of the evening.  To dance to the music of the garden with the King of Kings, knowing that it was all created by Him for you!  There was no joy like this.  Nothing like it had ever been experienced since then – no form of worship in this realm could come close to comparing to the life of constant worship in that place.

            Eve had no idea how long they had lived there.  Time had very little meaning in those days.  The hours went by, day into night, night into day.  When they tired, they slept.  When they were hungry, they ate.  They cared for the land in those days, not worked it as they did now.  And every seven days, they spent the hours basking in the glory of God.  Nothing could describe the life they had lived in that place, and nine centuries had not dulled the ache in Eve’s heart to go back.  She knew for what she had been created, and every fiber of her being yearned to be back there.