Genesis Chapter 2

So, yeah, the whole universe was complete. The sum totality of all energy and matter, and anti-matter and dark matter and we don’t even know it matters, all in their appointed places. Space-time and existence themselves. On the seventh day, then, God stopped working. God blessed the seventh day. Just as God had separated spheres of space, now so too with time. Rest is speical. Pausing is sacred. Stopping is holy. Ceaseless hustle culture is not God’s. God worked, God rested, and it is only after God created pausing, looking at what you have already done, being content in it, and resting that we say, that is how the universe was made.

[And now, rewind, the same creation, from another angle.]

At first when God made all the everythings, there were no plants and nothing sprouting up because God had not yet sent rain. You can’t say God didn’t make rain just because God hasn’t gotten to it, yet, Mrs. Landingham. And there was nobody to cultivate the land. I mean, nature, without human intervention? Don’t be absurd.

Water would come up from the ground, and muddy the earth.

God took some of that clay, that lumpy lifeless muck and breathed, inspired, holiness, Godliness, Godness, LIFE into that clay sculptures nostrils, and then the clay went from sculpture to man, from form to life. You’re a real boy now!

God planted a garden in Eden, a delightful place, in the East.

And in that garden, God put that first of dudes. God filled it with trees, and absolutely mouth-wateringly delicious fruits.

[I invite you to close your eyes, inhale deeply, exhale slowly, imagine the rustling wind and the smell of your favourite fresh fruit and the sun shines on your perfectly sculpted body.]

God put two particularly special trees in the middle of this garden. The fruit of these arboreal blessings ain’t no ordinary apple picking with the youth group on an October afternoon kind of fruit. On one, was a fruist that keeps you alive indefinitely, Rapunzel’s hair in nutritional form, and on the other, a fruit that makes gives you a deep and abiding knowledge of Good and Evil.

There was a lovely babbling brook, because bubbling water is the source of all life in the pre-rain utopia. Outside of Eden it divided into four mighty and very much historically real rivers. Pishon, around the country of Havilah.

Why I heard there’s gold up in that country there!

And also exclusive Pishon Prime perfumes and precious and unique gems. If you are a perfectly sculpted naked man tending a garden, who doesn’t yet know what a woman is, but may want to impress her once you do, Pishon perfumes and precious gems. Gifts for the lady of distinguished tastes, who will have literally no other choice than you.

The second river is the Gihon, around Cush, and there is absolutely nothing of note to say about it.

The third is the river Tigris, east of Assyria, and the fourth is the Euphrates.

This man in the garden was given, by God, two responsibilities. Guard it. Cultivate it. And given one rule. Eat all the fruit you want. Any fruit from any tree. They are absolutely perfect. Do not eat, however, from the know everything tree. Knowing everything is not delicious. And if you eat it, you will die. You will also learn what death is, just before dying. I am telling you, do not eat that fruit. I gave you better fruit. THIS SHOULD NOT BE COMPLICATED, even if you were born yesterday.

Having observed our man wandering around this garden for an indeterminate period of time, God said, “It is not good for a man to live alone.” We do not know what this man was doing, or spectactuarly failing to do, all alone. If a man is wrong in a perfect paradise and nobody has to listen to him, is he really wrong? God seems to say, yes, even then. This sitch is no bueno. This is terrible. Man is cool and all, but I can do better.

I will make a suitable partner for this fella. So God took some dirt. We are all, after all, dirt.

First God made all the animals and birbies. And assigned the new man the job of biologist taxonomist, and told him, name these things. And so the man named the animals. And they were great. Animals are awesome. And so we have the first pets. But our man here was not destined to be alone in a pile of fruit baskets and endless kitties and goats and otters to hang out with, or as I used to call it, the dream. God saw that the animals and the man were good pals, but not good as partners. Remember fam, just because someone is super fun to hang out with, and even awesome, does not necessarily mean they need to be your primary partner forever.

The Lord put the man in a deep deep sleep. Possibly by assigning such a large and tiring biology class assignment as “name all the things.” Perhaps as punishment for “naked mole rat,” the man was sent to bed. The text isn’t specific. But the man fell asleep.

In his sleep, God removed one of his ribs, and used that to make a partner, not one below or behind or above him, but a partner to be beside him, a clear metaphor that you have to be actively trying to be sexist to miss for a few centuries.

The man upon seeing the woman for the first time, in what can only be described as a never repeated social miracle, spoke immediately and eloquently.

“At last, this animal is the same kind of animal that I am! We have the same kinds of bones and same kind of flesh.

This is a woman. She came out of man.”

And this story is why men leave their parents and make new families with their wives, and they become one new creation together.

One more thing. This meet-cute. This first Biblical love story. It’s not PG. Not technically. They were naked the whole time. And not at all embarassed or ashamed about it.

The Garden of Eden by Peter Paul Reubens.