Eve leaned back from
her work and rubbed her hands. They
seemed to be more gnarled and swollen every day. She knew, as the matriarch of this family,
that the other women would have released her from these daily tasks if she
wished. Every year she lived was longer
than any other woman had ever lived, so this (like everything else) was new
ground. But she did not like to be
idle. She knew better than anyone else
just what she was created for. Doing the
Lord’s work was part of her design. She
also carried with her some lingering guilt, even after centuries of life, that
the work should have ever become so hard and toilsome in the first place. How could she shirk her duties knowing that
her choices had brought them about? No,
she no longer agonized over what she’d done that day so long ago. She was too old, and she had long since
forgiven herself as she knew the Lord, in His mercy, had done. Still, she could never shake the feeling that
she ought to participate, even if only a little, in the daily tasks of
survival. She owed her children that
much.
She smiled as she watched some of these children now
playing under a nearby tree. She had
given up trying to keep track of the generations that came from her body a
long, long time ago. She did marvel at
the fact that each and every person in the world now could be traced back to
her. They were, and would always be, all
her descendents. She smiled to herself
as she thought about it, for what other woman would ever be able to say such a
thing? What an amazing creation of the
Lord – family. Family ties, family
bonds. All of mankind bonded together by
the same blood. She wondered what those
ties would mean in the years to come.
Would her descendents remember from where they came? Would they keep faith with one another? Or would the sin she and her husband had let into creation fester and grow, driving
people further and further into their own selfish desires and curiosities? After all, it had only taken to their
firstborn child to see bloodshed, and she had heard of his many infamous
exploits since his exile so many decades ago – but she wouldn’t dwell on that
now, she firmly told herself. She would
not think of Cain, her wayward son wandering in faraway lands. It did no good to dwell on such things, Adam
had told her over and over again. There
was nothing they could do but pray, and worrying only brought the pain back to
her heart fresh and anew.
Instead she turned her thoughts to her own
mortality. She wondered how much longer
she had in this realm. She had already
lived over 900 years. How much
longer? Again, as with so much else,
this was new territory. No one knew how
long man could last. However, she had a
growing sensation that her time here was growing to a close. And what would happen when death finally
came? Would she return to the land she
loved, or would she simply vanish from existence? She really didn’t think the latter was the
case. The older she got, the close she
felt to the Lord and the life He had for her next. Oh, if only she could communicate with Him
the way she once did! They were able to
have relationship, to be sure, and He spoke to her and her to Him, but it was
never, never the same as it had once been.
If only she could see Him, walk side by side with Him again. 900 years of life had not dulled those
memories, as if anything ever could. Her
and Adam, walking and talking with the God that created them for His own pleasure. She still lived those moments in her
dreams. She longed for the day that
would surely come when she would not wake from those dreams, but pass into them
as her reality.
She leaned back and closed her eyes, remembering…
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