First Sunday | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: First Sunday | Previous Challenge Entry
By JoAnne Potter
10/31/07
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Before time, the Lord unfolded His gift of creation. Opening His abode of light, He laid the earth’s foundations and measured its dimension by that white radiance. For yet unmade man, He spread out the sky and formed doors to hold back the sea. He dried seabeds to clay and planted leaf and branch. When the morning stars sang together, He bound them for seasons. Over these, He loosed a sun and moon. Into His newborn sky, He gave eagle and raven broadwinged flight. His lion preyed, sleek and hungry. His horse leaped, fierce and flowing. Behemoth strode and swayed, bones bronze tubes and limbs iron rods. Leviathan’s brows flashed and his mouth streamed firebrands.

But the Lord dreamed of more excellent flesh and blood, and so His hand raised up heavy, full of dark dust. Into this, He blew an immortal soul, His own reflection and promise. The new-molded dust, the first Adam, sprang up and took hold of life in Eden. When God commanded, man rose and walked. Then, on the seventh day, Adam and his Lord rejoiced together.

The Lord blessed their shared rest, and Adam learned from Him, sitting down and standing, walking and lying down. Wrapped around by roar, hum, and chirp, Adam smelled black loam and tasted rich honey. Green fronds of silk and saber brushed his new skin. Streams rose up cool and he drank. Heavy fruit hung expectant and he ate. Hawk and leopard waited at his feet to be called by name. Work’s pleasure and dominion’s responsibility circumscribed his humanity and he stood tall in it.

Only Wisdom remained unimparted. So the Lord carried Adam to Eden’s summit, to the only place he would show but not share, and before the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Lord wrote His holy IAM on Adam’s heart.

From there, the tree commanded unmatched heights. With golden bough and silver leaf, it beckoned Adam, and he knew desire. He reached out to take forbidden hold, but as he did, he heard his own heart, beating yet in bright symphony with the Lord’s. Creation inhaled and hushed. The man must choose. Inside opaque silence, Adam heard only first words, “Let us make man…”, and remembered. The tree paled in the shadow of God’s consuming fire. Without another look, Adam turned his back.

Now all of Eden spread out before them, perfect fellowship between God and man. God’s mighty hand opened a new path for the man, parting river and cloud, tree and hill, to reveal His own clear way. The lesson ended.

“This is the way,” said the Lord. “Walk in it.”

Gen 1 & 2, Deut 11:19, Job 37 & 38, Isa 30:22

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