Good Thursday morning! Sun! We have a spring-like sun shining this morning! Take a little flight into fancy this morning and imagine that you got up and said a great "good morning!" to your pet and received an answer. Not, "mornin' cat" as I often say, but an address to the pet by name. "Good morning, Captain Kidd! How are you this morning?" The cat normally sits there and waits for me to head for the kitchen and my duties involving his food bowl. However, this morning, this fanciful morning, he returns my greeting and reports on what he saw while watching out the window last night.
That would be a bit stunning; I might even use one of my favorite words to describe my reaction: I would be flabbergasted. Adam and Eve got up each morning in Eden and spoke to the animals. How do we know this? Eve was not at all surprised to be addressed by the serpent. The serpent asked Eve a question and she replied without the least hesitation. Obviously, this conversation was not out of the ordinary for Eve. Now imagine the other side.
Adam and Eve have left the garden never to return. The familiar shape of a deer comes into view, munching Adam's crops planted and tended with toil. Adam speaks a greeting to the deer and is surprised to see the very deer he named flee in terror at the sound of his voice. We might get a similar feeling if one day every one of our friends and neighbors fled at the sound of our greeting. At first, we would wonder what in the world was going on; an April Fool's joke perhaps? As the days went on we would be saddened and lonely in our new found isolation.
Adam and Eve went through that feeling. They fell into the temptation and acquired the knowledge of good and evil. They had fellowship with God and exchanged it for the Law. Where they had walked and talked with God in the Garden, they now had to bring sacrifices to Him for atonement of sin. The demands and duties of the Law started immediately upon their leaving that Garden of Eden. The beasts they had spoken with now fled from them; they had to hunt and eat them, or tend them as livestock for food, or satisfy the law by sacrificing one of them. Adam and Eve may even have had a pet or two, but things just weren't the same.
The wonderful conversation they had with the beasts was now that of dumb pet and master, rancher and livestock, hunter and food, or predator and prey. At some point, and with certain animals, that relationship even became predator and pray. A greeting to a lion was no longer pleasant but foolish and even perilous. Some of Adam's children even in this age are preyed upon by the beasts he once had dominion over and fellowship with. How far we have fallen! The good news is that our Lord is an expert in restoration. All that has been lost will be made better one day. For thousands of years nature and man have yearned to return to a right relationship with God. One day, Jesus will make that happen. Look forward to that day in the hope of Christ Jesus.
Bucky
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