“You asked what it was like to know God face to face.  Oh, how can I explain it?  We enjoyed Him; it was wonderful to walk with him and talk with him.  Even when He was teaching and sharing His will with us, He was kind and loving. The garden was so beautiful; I have no words to explain.  Our life was free of care; to keep the garden was a joy.  Adam loved the animals.  He had named them, and it was as if he knew them all; they were his pets.  We played with them, and they entertained us. I loved the plants and trees, beautiful flowering trees full of fruit.

We also knew God’s power—controlled power.  Like the power of a rushing river, white water foaming over the rocks, so much more power than you could imagine, but we had no fear of his power. He told us how he had created the world and everything in it.  We loved his stories.  We felt safe and comforted by him, like how a soft warm fur coat feels to the skin.”

With that, Eve suddenly stopped as she realized what she said.  Her hands went to her face as she sobbed.  “How could we have given up what we had?  We were so foolish.  We broke His heart.”  In anger she continued. “We were deceived, but that’s no excuse!” she spat. “We had everything we could have ever wanted.  We knew him, but we did not know our own power, the power to destroy our lives.  If we had thought about it, if we had gone to him before we did what we did, he would have advised us.  But, still, WE KNEW HIM, and now we understand that knowing Him was all that mattered.”

Sighing deeply, she added, “We miss him.”

“What happened? you ask. God’s enemy came to us, masquerading as something wonderful; telling us God was holding things back from us. He deceived us into thinking that there was something else, something better than knowing and walking with God. There is something else, but it is NOT better. It is separation from Him, and loss of our fellowship with him.  We lost the best thing anyone could ever want…forever. We betrayed our very best friend, and the worst happened; sin entered creation.  What we did destroyed everything.”

“God had told us not to eat from that tree.  We had no idea what evil was.  But the serpent showed us the fruit and deceived us into thinking we needed this knowledge.  Now we know it was the knowledge of evil.  With one single bite everything thing changed.  We saw our nakedness as something bad; we knew fear—something we had NEVER imagined before.  Guilt flooded over us like a tidal wave, washing away every joy and happiness we had experienced with God and with each other.  All we could do was cling to each other in despair.”

“We started to blame each other, and we argued.  We were angry and sad…feelings that made us sick to our stomachs.  We were estranged from each other, yet we were afraid to be apart.  Adam tried to make coverings for us; it was all so bizarre.  Just like the evil one promised, we would know something else, but now we knew God had wanted to keep us from this pain.  There is no reason to know desolation.  And we were afraid to see God again.  We had NEVER been afraid of God, but we didn’t want to face Him, so we hid.”

“When he returned to the garden he called out to us, but we were too afraid to answer.  Of course he found us.”

“What have you done?” he asked.

“The look on his face was horror itself.  He knew what we had done; we needed to admit it.”

Her voice dropped to a whisper and she said, “That’s when we learned the touch of animal fur on our skin.  His gift to us…it was comforting. The skins covered us and made us feel less ashamed.”

She paused as tears began to run down her cheeks, continuing between sobs, “You see, we had never experienced death before.  We didn’t even know what it was.  We lost two of our sons because of our sin!  One brother killed the other!  We had no idea such horrible things would come to us, but God did!  That’s why he warned us about that awful tree…”

“Then, God punished us all.  He banned us from the garden to a life of hard work in the ground—separated from Him and his beautiful creation. The separation was the worst. He struck Satan to the ground too, and the serpent will forever crawl across the dirt.  However, he also gave us a hope. I felt like God held his hand out to me in that moment when he said that the seed of my womb would crush Satan.  God promised that through my womb, he would bring a treasure into the world who would fix the horrible mistake we made.  He would destroy his enemy and evil. He would make a way for us to see him face to face again.  He punished us but he did not reject us.”

Eve looked up, directly into my eyes, and said, “Do not be fooled. If you have God, you need NOTHING more.  He is enough; He is everything.”

Go to “The Women Speak” page for a study guide to go with this post.