The Harder Way

When the Garden of Eden couple listened to the talking serpent and ate fruit from the tree to be left alone, they did not have eyes to see up the road.  If they could have seen up the road where their choice would take them, maybe they would have made a different choice.  Or, maybe not.  Who knows?  We make terrible choices knowing they will have terrible consequences, but we often go ahead and choose the terrible choice.  Perhaps, they are more like us and we like them than we can really comprehend.

 

Most likely they could not see that their choice would take them outside the way the Lord God had planned for them.  Maybe they figured He would not have to know.  Maybe they figured He would not  know since He was not around when the fruit went in their mouths.  Regardless of the possibilities, they did make a choice which took them on a road they had not planned to walk.  The walk inside in the Garden was not a utopian kind of walk, but it was an easy walk compared to the walk they would have to take outside the Garden.  When the entrance to the Garden was closed to them, the easy way became a harsh, more difficult way. 

 

Inside the Garden was pain.  After the conversation of confrontation, the Lord God said to the woman, "I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children..." (Genesis 3:16)  To have her pain increased is an acknowledgment that the Garden was not empty of pain.  And while Adam had tilled the ground since the beginning of his days in the Garden, it would now be more difficult.  "..in toil you shall eat of it (ground)...thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you...by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread..."  (Genesis 3:17-19)  Life would be harder outside the way God had intended.  It is still that way for us.