A Story in a Garden

A Story in a garden

On the last day that God was making things he made a man and a woman after he had made everything else.  It says their names were Adam and Eve.  And when he had finished making them he put them in a very special garden.

 Do you know what a garden is? 

Do you like gardens?  I like gardens a lot!

Well gardens are places where plants are planted according to a plan.  And God planned and planted this garden so it was really special.  Some gardens have flowers, and some have things like tomatoes, beans, and strawberries that you can eat.  And some others have different kinds of trees.  I kind of think this garden had every kind of plant you would like in it.  It was probably pretty to look at and sweet to smell and yummy to taste. 

What kind of plants would you put in a garden?

Well God put two special plants in this garden. The Bible, says they were trees.  They were in the very center of the garden. 

One of the trees was called the tree of Life.  That sure sounds like a good tree.  Don’t you think so too? 

The other tree was called the tree of knowing good and evil.  That one sounds like it might be partly good too, maybe. 

Let’s see what God said. 

Well God told Adam and Eve they could eat anything they wanted to in the whole garden except for one thing.  Do you know what that was? 

God said they could not eat any of the fruit from the tree of knowing good and evil.  For a time things were really wonderful.  Adam and Eve lived in the garden and God would come and walk and talk with them.  Can you think of what wonderful things God must have told them?  Maybe how caterpillars turn into butterflies, or why it tickles when someone blows on your neck. 

After a while though, something pretty bad happened.  The Devil came and teased Eve and got her to eat the fruit that God said they should not eat.  He told her that if she would eat it she would be like God because she could decide what was good and what was not good.  Then Eve got Adam to eat it and that’s when all the trouble started. 

One time when I was about 12 years old we were having a picnic at my Grandma Price’s house.  We were all in the back yard with my aunts and uncles and cousins.  In grandma’s back yard there was an apple tree.  It had some low branches that we kids could reach and there were lots of pretty little green apples where we could get to them.  My momma (your great grandma) told me to not eat those apples.  Well I didn’t listen and they were yummy so I ate 5 or 6 of them.  They weren’t very big.  Do you know what happened next?  Nope, I didn’t get a spanking.  I didn’t need one because I got a tummy ache, really bad.  My momma was right but I thought I knew what was good.  So I suffered because I didn’t believe my mother and do what she said.   When we don’t believe what God and our Mommy and Daddy tell us is good we can get into lots of trouble.  

After they ate the fruit of the tree of knowing good and evil, Adam and Eve got into lots of trouble.  God had to make them leave the garden so they wouldn’t eat the fruit from the tree of life, because you cannot have both.  So for a long time everybody thought they could decide what was good and what was not good.  Almost no one listened to what God said was good and evil. 

In the Bible, in the book of Colossians it says; “Children, always obey your parents, because this pleases the Lord.”  So you see even from the very beginning it was important to obey.  I think it is one of the most important things we can learn.  Don’t you agree?