7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. . . .15 Then the Lord God took the
man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden
you may freely eat; 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely
die.”
18 And the Lord God said, “It is
not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.”
19 Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the
field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam
called each living creature, that was
its name. 20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of
the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a
helper comparable to him.
21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and
He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then
the rib which the Lord God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He
brought her to the man. (Genesis 2:15-23)
In
the beginning, God spoke life out of the sea, Earth, and sky. “Let there be,” God said, and there was.
But
God didn’t speak humanity into existence. The Creator dug down in the dust,
mining the surface for water, salts, carbon, and all the offerings of asteroids
and stars. He laid a double-helixed frame
and forged the elements on it, forming man of the dust of the ground.
Later,
the Lord declared, “It is not good that man should be alone,” which is an interesting
conclusion since Adam was doing just fine all by himself. He had two jobs: tending the garden of Eden required
physical exertion (Genesis 1:15); naming the animals required intellectual
discernment (Genesis 1:19). By God’s
account, Adam performed both tasks flawlessly.
Still, God saw that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone.
Adam
needed Eve because God’s plan was for people to be social creature, to fulfill
the calling to dominion and blessing as a herd, a pack, a world-wide family.
Just
because you do what you do well doesn’t mean that’s all there is to what you
do.
A
human had succeeded alone. God wanted
humanity to succeed together.
So
God anesthetized Adam, made an incision in his torso, extracted a tissue sample
from his rib cage, and formed the rib into a human female. Today we call it cloning. (Yeah, God did
that first, too.)
The
female was made from the perfect, sinless flesh of a perfect, sinless man under perfect, sinless
conditions by infinitely perfect and sinless God Himself. She wasn’t inferior. He wasn’t a failed first draft. They had been individually handcrafted by the
inventor of the universe. The first Man and Woman were
both perfectly what God wanted them to be.
He wanted
them to be more than everything prior to them had been. The Lord didn’t just give humanity form and
life, He gave us a portion of His spirit.
He breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and man became a
living being.
“It
is,” as Jesus said, “the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” (John
6:63)
The
imago dei is not (or not simply) in our opposable thumbs and upright gait. We bear the image of God in and by our
spirit. The soul that animates every man
and woman is a breath on the mirror from the mouth of God.
---Anderson T. Graves II is a writer,
community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural
leadership development.
Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in
Fairfield, Alabama; executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth
Networking Organization (SAYNO); and
director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human
Development (NIHD).
Subscribe to my personal blog www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and
clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.
Support by check or money order may be mailed to
Miles Chapel CME Church
P O Box 132
Fairfield, Al 35064
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