Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: SICK (05/09/19)
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TITLE: Consequences | Previous Challenge Entry
By Dave Walker
05/14/19 -
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They rested beside a waterfall. The soft murmur of tumbling water resonated with his deep contentment. Soon the sun's warmth would wane and the evening breeze would stroke the air with coolness.
And God would come.
Not that He was ever absent. He is love and where there's love, He is there. But in the cool of the evening He was manifestly present. They spoke with Him face to face while walking through the garden. Sometimes, He spoke of His love and His plans for them. Sometimes Adam showed Him what he'd been doing that day. Yesterday, he'd told Him the names he'd given the animals that came to him. Always, however, his greatest pleasure was feeling His presence, basking in His glory.
On impulse, Adam jumped up and in one lithe movement of his perfect body, pulled Eve to her feet.
"Come! I'll race you to the centre of the garden."
Eve was up to the challenge and they streaked off --- two splendid athletes running in harmony. Adam slowed as they reached their destination, allowing Eve to arrive first. Laughing, he pulled her to himself as he arrived and felt her lovely body against his. How he adored her! What a beautiful gift God had given him.
Then they looked up at the tree. It looked different today. Its fruit was almost incandescent. Eve put Adam's thoughts into words. "I wonder why God doesn't want us to eat that fruit."
Adam rejoined. "What did He mean when He said we'd die? What is death? Everything here lives forever. How can something cease to exist?"
Suddenly, with a blinding flash a beautiful creature stood before them and spoke in a musical voice, pure and soothing. "You won't die. How can you? God forbade this fruit because He doesn't want you to be like Him, who knows good and evil."
Eve looked at Adam. "Do you think God's deceiving us? Holding us back from something He doesn't want us to know? "
Adam shifted his gaze uneasily from the fruit, to Eve and back. "I don't know."
The creature before them shone with light. In his hands the fruit glowed as he spoke. "It's only a little thing. You're not committing some horrific crime. What can happen?"
Adam hesitated. Above them, unseen, the angels watched apprehensively. In the wings, the spectre of wasted victims of the Holocaust, of a billion babies ripped to death in their mothers' wombs, of glazed-eyed living dead languishing in a smoke-laden hell, of battle fields strewn with the bodies of young men waited, ready to be unleashed, pending Adam's decision.
Eve was first. "It's only a bite of fruit. It can't do much damage. God loves us. He won't harm us. He can't mean what He said." She took a bite and gave a murmur of approval. "It's delicious! Have some." She passed it to her husband. He bit into it .......... And all creation convulsed.
For the first time, Adam felt ashamed. "We shouldn't have done that." For once, he was not looking forward to the cool of the day. He looked for the brilliant figure that was before them beside the tree and gasped. Now, a creature dark and hideous, grinned obscenely at his victory.
There was weeping in heaven where there is no time, for there the spectres became reality. And sickness and death invaded. Sickness of bodies and sickness of mind. Sickness of plants and sickness of animals. Sickness of individuals and of societies. Wasted bodies coughing blood, writhing in pain and breaking the hearts of loved ones, entered the world.
Yet, as Adam took that bite and bowed to satan, in heaven --- where there is no time --- God came to the rescue. Nails were plunged into the hands and feet of a Saviour as He hung on a Cross. All the sickness and pain from six thousand years and more was laid on Him.
That bite seemed such a small thing to Adam. It cost the Son of God His life.
What repercussions might there be to an act of disobedience that we perform that seems so small to us?
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