Wednesday, February 12, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Eden
The LORD God had sent no rain upon the earth,
but a stream was welling up out of the earth
and was watering all the surface of the ground.
In Austin there has been a great rain for the past two days, and flood warnings are out. I don’t think of water coming from out of the ground, but of course underground springs are everywhere, and underground lakes provide half of the world’s drinking water. Even so the volume of those lakes would cover all the continents to a depth of more than three feet.
The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground.
He blew into his nostrils the breath of life,
And so man became a living being.
Neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi wrote When Breath Becomes Air. His lung cancer ended his life sooner than he expected. He, like all of us, spent time considering how he wanted to live, being his own “creator,” so to speak.
I had mapped out this whole forty-year career for myself—the first twenty as a surgeon-scientist, the last twenty as a writer. But now that I am likely well into my last twenty years, I don’t know which career I should be pursuing. If I had some sense of how much time I have left, it’d be easier. If I had two years, I’d write. If I had ten, I’d get back to surgery and science. If only I knew how many months or years I had left. Tell me three months, I’d spend time with family. Tell me one year, I’d write a book. Give me ten years, I’d get back to treating diseases. The truth that you live one day at a time didn’t help: What was I supposed to do with that day?”
Adam barely knew the meaning of the word “day.” God created him out of the “clay of the ground.” Out of the dust he came. Later David would remind himself that it was to the dust he would return. For Adam there was no past, and he only later began to think of a future. He lived in the moment, like every child that is ever born.
The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east.
Out of the ground the LORD God made various trees grow
that were delightful to look at and good for food …
In those days God’s man did not eat animals or plants  – he ate fruit, vegetables and nuts. He could find whatever he wanted on the trees and plants around him.
There were two other trees:
… the tree of life in the middle of the garden
and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden
except the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
From that tree you shall not eat;
the moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.”
Surely that surprised Adam, and later Eve. Perhaps they did not ask questions of God, since they were children of God and worshiped him, loved him, and knew his love for them. We children of Adam and Eve ask plenty of questions, however.
Adam (and soon Eve’s) immediate and intimate relationship with the Maker God allowed them to focus their thoughts on their Father rather than self-protection. At the beginning they had no concept of protecting themselves … from what? Everything was made for them, and they did not, at first, threaten each other.
God does not mention the tree of life in his Genesis 2 warning. Since it was allowed, his new children probably ate from this tree as well. Their physical lives were nourished by the fruit and nuts of every other tree, their eternal life by fruit from the tree of life.
Of course, as we know but they do not, everything is about to change. Still, as Paul Kalanithi wrote,
Even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I am still living.
(Genesis 2, Psalm 104, John 17, Mark 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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