Choice.
When a parent tells a child not to do something, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will do exactly what you asked them not to do! Why? Because they only hear the word 'do'.
Gen 2:4 When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the Lord God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil.
So the earth was barren before man was made.
Gen 2:6 Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land. Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man's nostrils, and the man became a living person.
So man was made outside of the Garden of Eden from the dust of the barren land.
Gen 2:8 Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made.
God took man and placed him in a fertile land that was pure and rich in resources.
Gen 2:9 The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground - trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.
In fact this garden was actually an area of land.
Gen 2:10 The river flowed from the land of Eden, watering the garden and then dividing into four branches.
The river flowed from the land to four other areas, the land of Havilah, the land of Cush, the land of Asshur and the Euphrates. The river flowed from Eden outwards.
Gen 2:15 The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, "You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden - except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you will surely die."
So Adam comes from the dust outside of Eden is placed in this amazing wealth filled land and told not to do something.
Gen 2:18 Then the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him." So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one. He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals. But still there was no helper just right for him. So the Lord caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of man's ribs, and closed up the opening. Then he brought her to the man.
Woman was made from man inside of Eden the land of beauty, plenty and love. She did not hear God's statement about not eating from the tree of knowledge. She heard it second hand. This is why the serpent went for the woman, he questioned the one person who knew nothing about the warning other than what man had told her. Doubt could be established in her mind because the message came from a second source and not the True Source.
Gen 3:6 The woman was convinced.
Woman took the serpents take on the warning instead of going to seek help and confirmation from the True source. She made a choice based on false information, on deceit, on someone else's interpretation of what God said.
Of course God was disappointed, they had direct access to Him in the Garden. Woman could have gone to him and said, "There is an annoying serpent feeding false information to me about the tree of knowledge. Can you tell me what you actually said please." God could have stopped that destructive voice straight away by telling woman as well as man the True facts together. But God trusted man to look after the woman and to speak only of the Truth, to help her resist temptation. Man was expected to be responsible and together with his woman respect God's warning. Because woman did not call upon God in her state of uncertainty, she and man made a wrong decision. Therefore, God found her with her man later on with knowledge that they were not supposed to have. They were duped by the serpent and because of that they forfeited their right to be in a place of innocence. Hence the eviction.
The river that flowed out of Eden took with it the curse to the other lands.
God allowed man to choose. Man and woman chose to be like God. They could no longer live in a place where God walked, with the gates closed a distance flowed up between God and man. Man's choices would continue to send ripples of pain throughout all of the universe to this very day.
Choices.
Man's continued greed for more remains with us. More money, more power, more knowledge all battled for at the expense of the poor and needy.
God gave us the choice at the beginning. Man turned away from Good and chose evil. This is constantly the case in our world. Instead of choosing God's Love we choose the world's take on things. We blame God for the horrors instead of looking at ourselves and our selfish ways.
God cries, make no mistake. He is in the sufferings of the women who are raped and the babies who die from aids, the orphans who are sold to the sex trade, the childhoods taken by war. Every strike of the whip He accepted willing for our sins, for our turning away from Him. It is much easier to blame everything on God, much harder to accept that we are the cause of these evil deeds. That we allow them to happen on our watch, by sitting and doing nothing and handing over the responsibility of our actions by saying it is someone else's fault. Even better to say it is God's fault because He should be doing something about it. How interesting it is that the loudest voices who cry where is your god, are those that do not believe in him, so how could a god that doesn't exist do anything about the horrors anyway?
God does do something, he stirs our outrage. We have the choice as to whether that outrage is put to helping people or to yelling our disgust at God to do something. Yes, He could stop it now but we chose our course. He is a just God. He wants us to take responsibility for our world that he gave to the first man, when He gave him authority over the land, and made him the steward of the earth.
We need to understand that His Love is for everyone, and to stop hating and to start building a better world for our nations together in Love. To stand up to the horrors of war, to speak out together for the poor who have no voice. To join globally in Love to agree to share out our resources so that there are not the big differences between those that have and those that have not.
This requires a selfless love, a rethinking of what is important. People's egos standing down and taking a back seat. Putting those that are in desperate need on the top of our agenda's instead of our self gains. Countries who think they are important to realize that they are not, to have humility and to believe that they can stop the imbalance. We need to stop listening to the lies of the serpent, and to do what is best for the whole world.
It is a sad fact that there are enough resources to stop the poverty if we all pool our stockpiles. We can stop dictators and wars, if we refuse to fuel them. Again a sad fact is that there are people who want the wars and will do anything to keep them going, because they are making huge amounts of money from them. They don't care about the ripples of devastation that they leave. This is a human condition, and we need to take control of this false thinking.
Of course there are natural disasters too, these will always happen, we live on a planet! It is our response that matters here again, our response in Love not in blaming and hating.
What was it I said at the beginning of this blog, "When a parent tells a child not to do something, you can bet your bottom dollar that they will do exactly what you asked them not to do! Why? Because they only hear the word 'do'."
So let us DO.
Do love God, by putting Him first and ourselves last.
Do listen to God, not take things second hand that are false and draw us away from Him.
Do love our neighbour.
Do love our enemies.
Do be servants to others needs.
Do share our talents and resources.
Do good.
Let us learn from the mistake of the first man and woman. Only take the Truth from the One True Source.
God bless.
