The Day the Hiding Started

There were more fruit trees in Eden than the man and the woman could count, and God had asked them to leave only one alone: the tree in the middle of the garden.

One day the craftiest creature God had made, a snake, slid up to the woman.

"Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?"

"We may eat from the trees," said the woman. "But not from the one in the middle. God said if we eat it, or even touch it, we will die."

"You will not die!" said the snake. "God knows that when you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God."

The woman looked at the fruit. It looked good to eat, and it would make her wise. She picked it. Crunch. Her husband was right beside her, and he ate some too.

Their eyes were opened. They looked down, saw they had no clothes on, and for the first time they felt ashamed. They sewed fig leaves together to cover up.

That evening, when the breeze blew cool, they heard God walking in the garden. They ducked behind the trees. (Hiding from God behind a tree is a hard trick, since he made the tree.)

"Where are you?" God called.

The man answered from the leaves. "I heard you, and I was afraid because I had no clothes on. So I hid."

"Who told you that?" said God. "Have you eaten from the tree I told you not to eat from?"

The man pointed. "The woman you gave me! She gave me the fruit, and I ate it."

"What is this you have done?" God asked the woman.

She pointed too. "The snake tricked me, and I ate."

The snake had nobody left to point at.

God spoke to the snake first. "You will crawl on your belly and eat dust all your life. I will make you and the woman enemies, your children and hers. Her child will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."

God told the woman that having babies would hurt now. He told the man that the ground would grow thorns, that he would sweat for his food, and that one day he would die and go back to the dust he came from.

Adam named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all the living.

Then God made clothes out of animal skins and dressed them with his own hands. Something had died so they could be covered. After that he sent them out of the garden, and angels with a flaming sword guarded the way back.

Skins wear thin, though. Adam and Eve walked out into a world of thorns, grew old, and died, still waiting. Their children had children, and with every new baby someone could wonder, "Is this the snake-crusher?" Thousands of years went by, and God did not forget what he had said.

At last a child was born of a woman, just as God had said. When he grew up, soldiers came for him one night in a garden where he had gone to pray. They pushed thorns onto his head, took away his clothes, and nailed him to a wooden cross. The snake struck him, and he died.

They laid him in a tomb in a garden. On the third morning he walked out alive, and the snake's head was crushed.

That child was Jesus, and he still comes looking for everyone who is hiding.