The Garden Where Nobody Was Lonely

The world was brand new, but the fields were still bare. God had not sent any rain yet, and there was no one to dig or plant. A mist rose up out of the earth and wet the ground.

So God scooped up some of that damp dust and shaped a man. Then he bent close and breathed into the man's nose the breath of life.

(His name was Adam, which sounds like the Hebrew word for ground. Being named after dirt keeps a person humble.)

God planted a garden for him in a place called Eden, full of trees that were lovely to look at and good to eat. In the middle of the garden stood the tree of life, and near it the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God gave Adam the job of caring for the garden, and one rule.

"You may eat from any tree in the garden," God said, "except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. On the day you eat from it, you will surely die."

Everything God had made so far, he had called good. Now, for the first time, God said something was not good.

"It is not good for the man to be alone," God said. "I will make a helper who is just right for him."

First God brought the animals to Adam, to see what he would name them.

"Elephant!" said Adam. "Hedgehog! Camel! Flamingo!"

(Somebody had to look a hippopotamus in the face and decide what it was called. It was Adam.)

The lion could roar at him. The parrot could say his own words back to him. But in that whole parade of fur and feathers and scales, there was not one creature like him.

So God put Adam into a deep, deep sleep. While he slept, God took out one of his ribs and closed up the place. Out of the rib God built a woman, and he brought her to the man.

Adam woke up, looked at her, and shouted, "At last! This one is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!"

That is why, the Bible says, a man leaves his father and mother and holds on tight to his wife, and the two become one. A husband and wife promise to be faithful: to belong to each other and to no one else.

They wore no clothes at all, and they did not feel ashamed one bit. They had nothing to hide.

The garden would not stay that way. Before long the man and the woman would eat from the one tree, and the first husband and wife would find out they had something to hide after all.

Weddings came and went, in tents and towns and palaces. Every bride and groom made the promise, and none kept it perfectly. But God's prophets said that one day God himself would be like a groom to his people, and he would keep his promise forever.

Then came another man, whom the Bible calls the last Adam. His sleep went deeper than Adam's: he died on a cross. A soldier opened his side with a spear. And out of his death God began building him a bride, made of every person from every land who trusts him.

At the end of everything there will be a wedding. The groom will be Jesus. And like the first man waking up in the garden, he will look at his bride and be glad.