Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: First (as in original) (01/10/05)
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TITLE: The First Beginnings | Previous Challenge Entry
By Carol Adams
01/17/05 -
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It all happened some 2000 years ago, in a lovely garden tended by the first man. The first man
became a Master Gardener and a Shepherd to the many animals that he named. God saw he was
diligent in his work, and all the animals and birds had mates, but he did not. It was God’s
first plan of divine romance and He took Adam’s rib to make his counterpart. She was
the first, the beginning. She was the most beautiful creature that Adam had ever seen. Adam and Eve were first enthralled with their beauty, and then as they walked and talked, they became as one. The first marriage.
Adam was the first to be told that they could eat of anything in the Garden, except for the tree
of good and evil and they were not to eat of it. Eve not being in this world very long had the
first encounter with the serpent tempting her to eat of its fruit and telling her she would be like God and she would not die if she ate. She was the first to believe the lie he told. She was the first to eat, and the first to share it with her husband who was by her side. They ate together and immediately they were the first to recognize that something was wrong. They saw each other differently. They were first to feel shame.
Then all of a sudden, they heard God walking in the Garden. What were they to do? Being no
longer pure and innocent, they ran and hid and covered themselves with leaves to hide their shame. The Garden was intensely quiet. God did not hear Adam and Eve talking or laughing
as they explored this vast utopia. God then calls out to them, and Adam told God that they were
hiding because they saw they were naked. “How do you know you are naked?,” God said. Because we ate of the fruit you told us not to.
The firsts of blame descend upon Adam and Eve. “If you wouldn’t have given me this woman,
I never would have ate of the tree!” Then the Lord asks Eve, “What is this you have done?” Then the woman gives her first account that the serpent deceived her. This was the condemnation upon the serpent. The first time God cursed anything. Always before everything He created was good.
Now he cursed the serpent and took his legs out from under him and made him to crawl on his belly and he would always be ugly and man would seek to kill him, and he would seek to strike the heel. They would always be at war with each other.
The first consequences of sin. She was the first to know pain in childbearing. Adam was the first to be cast out of the Garden and eke out a living among thorns and thistles. He was the first to know sweat on the brow.
God was so gracious to the sinning pair. He could no longer look at them in their sin, so the
first animal was killed and the first sacrifice of sin garment was placed on them as their clothing.
A sacrificial lamb was killed to pay the price for their sin.
First, joy and excitement in the Garden. First disobedience to the Words of God, First recognition
of what their disobedience brought, and first consequences of sin to them and the serpent. First real pains in childbearing and in labor, and the first to be cast out of the Garden.
Not so many months and years pass that when we see yet another first. The first murder within the family. Cain had the first option to do right, but because of his anger, he chose wrongly [Genesis 4:6-8 NAS]. And again, God punishes by telling him he would be a wanderer and that the
ground will not yield the best fruit any longer.
Adam and Eve’s first sin was against God. Cain’s first sin was against God and man. Cain responds to the punishment and God responds to Cain by putting a sign on him that no one would slay him. God is always merciful.
First beginnings have devastating consequences and ends without the Lord in them.
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