ALIVE: Chapter Four - Little Gods v. Nature

Reproduction is key to life. One plus one becomes three. Grieving childless Adam bestowed upon receptive Eve another of his seeds and out popped Seth, who knew no brothers for a long time. When other sons and daughters were born to Adam and Eve, they told their new crop of children about the murder of Abel and that killing one's brother was the worst thing a child of God could do to his or her own soul. The wiser family never visited Cain in Nod. Adam tilled Able's blood into the earth more and more every spring until it eventually produced a fragrant patch of thyme.

Year after year Eve hoped that her invisible beloved son Able would visit her like invisible God had so often, but the empty silence lingered like an unwelcome guest. Only her memories of the carefree child who played with his frolicking lambs in the sunshine kept the memory of Able alive in her heart. Baby Seth kept Eve busy with his childish antics, and soon she heard herself laugh again. It had been a very long time since laughter had welled up in her.

Eve taught her children that God made her to be like Him, and that she could invoke His name and He would listen to her, and sometimes speak. Adam told their children that God was his father and their grandfather. God spoke less and less. Seth and his brothers and sisters sensed that they were being protected by an invisible, but all powerful God whom they didn't comprehend. No one else was murdered. Neither did anyone give gifts to God. Instead, they worked to grow food and ate it, and slept when the sun went down, and woke up at sunrise in a steady rhythm we call Life.

The family of Adam and Eve were a peaceful family, they were creative and generous and very intelligent. Adam and his sons made tools to help them with their farming and to help them make shelters that kept the animals away, and that gave them shade in places where trees did not grow. Eve and her daughters composed songs and made clothing out of hair and and string they pulled from vines and branches of trees. They were happy and showed it by singing and dancing together.

After thousands of suns and moons appeared and disappeared the children grew tall and strong in mature bodies that resembled their parents. More children were born from them and no one ever died, until one day Adam, when he was 930 years old, laid down to sleep and never woke up.

Eve spotted Adam's body while on a walk to gather flowers. She took a good long look at him and shook him to wake up. Adam didn't move. He appeared to be dead like Abel, only without the blood all over him. Eve was astonished and screamed. Then she cried. She wondered if Adam had gone to find Abel. She called out to God to tell her where Adam had gone. But God was silent.

In her grief, Eve remembered the day when Adam had told her not to eat from the tree with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. He warned her then that she would die. But she didn't know what death meant, and she still didn't understand death. That was 930 years ago. Eve had never since the murder of Abel seen a dead human being. Adam was the first natural death that she had witnessed and she didn't expect it. Eve didn't know how this happened and where Adam went. She moaned; she wept; she cried. She cried out to God to come and talk to her and tell her what happened to Adam. Adam's skin turned blue and stiff.

Seth heard his mother screaming and crying and rushed over to her. He saw his father in stillness and looked away. Instead he tried to console his mother, but he was afraid too. His brothers and sisters ran up to Seth and Eve to ask what had happened. Then they looked down at Adam's lifeless body and gasped. Each of them gasped, one after the other they gasped in a symphony of horror.

Eve remembered that Adam and Cain planted Abel in the earth and so she told her sons to go over to Abel's grave and plant another beside it so Adam could lay deep in the earth by his son. After they buried Adam, Eve walked alone up to her favorite hill where she often went to think about her life, or her children, and about the days when they lived in Eden. When she arrived, she found her favorite rock and sat upon it and weeped alone some more. She called out again, begging God to come to visit her. It had been so long since she felt His presence.

Soon, the familiar cool breeze swept across Eve's tear stained face. "My daughter," said God, Yahweh "Don't despair. You will soon be with Adam, my son. I never wanted you to know death, how I wanted to shield you from the destructive power of sin."

"I wanted to be wise like You my Lord." she replied defensively. "Please take me to Adam now. I want to be with him." She was comforted by talking with the Lord again and hoped He would never leave her.

"First you must return to your children and make sure that they know Me and know that they can invoke My Name and I will come to them. For just as you and Adam were made in My image so were your children and grandchildren. Let them know that humankind flows from Me. Will you do this? Then you may rejoin Adam and Abel beneath the earth."

"Lord, I don't know what it means to be made in your image? I can't see You, I can only feel Your presence. Who are You?"

The Lord God had compassion on Eve in her ignorance, and answered, "Eve, look around you at all that I have created and by my Creation tell Me who I am."

Eve looked up at the horizon to her left and right as far as she could see, then she looked at the field below and saw cattle grazing. She saw chimpanzees swinging from limb to limb in the nearby woods. She saw orchards of fig and olive trees. Then she looked down at lavender and pink and white wild flowers of different shapes and sizes blanketing the earth and little chameleons scurrying busily between them. With her eyes drinking in the grand variety and beauty, the balance of living matter and non living matter, of rocks and dust, and water, she finally looked toward God's voice and said, "You are amazing! Did you really create all of this before You created me?"

She felt God smile. Then she added, "I see that You must be brilliant and sensitive, creative and artistic."

"As are you and your children, My dear one. Tell them to use the gifts that I have given to humankind wisely. It is a big responsibility to be endowed with so much. More than what you see, my child, I have placed My Kingdom in your hearts. Live there in peace and honor Me, and we will be together forever."

"What is there left to create, my Lord? You have given us everything!"

Eve heard a little chuckle from God.

"I have only given you the foundation, the building blocks; tell your children to go and build a world within this world, made by your equally intelligent and creative minds, then I will come to visit and be proud of you."

Just as suddenly as He arrived at her calling, Eve felt the spirit of the Lord vanish. She wondered where He went.

Strengthened and composed Eve descended the hill to carry out her mission. She called her children together and told them that she too would soon die as their father had, and she told them everything that God wanted them to know. She hoped that they would remember and be as kind and compassionate to each other as God and Adam had been to her.

Eve felt ambivalent about dying. She wanted desperately to be with Adam and Abel no matter where they were, but she didn't want to leave her children, and her garden. She was frightened to live under the earth where the sun did not shine and there was no air to breathe.

Over in Nod Cain and his hairy wife gave birth to Enoch and several other children. The children of Cain and Farley were as handsome and bright as Cain. They were not hairy and dull-witted like their mother. Farley grew proud of the looks of her husband and her children. She no longer thought hairless Cain was odd. Their children were more industrious and creative than any other children in the land of Nod.

After many years of living in Nod and being ridiculed for his smooth skin, Cain took his family and left to built a city of his own. He named it Enoch after his first born son. Cain encouraged his children to go to the land of his birth, and choose wives and husbands from the children of his parents, so his grandchildren would be smooth skinned and industrious too.

Cain and Farley took their stores of food and cattle to Enoch. There Cain taught his children to invoke the name of the Lord God. As time went by the sons of Cain returned to Enoch with the daughters of Seth and the other sons of Adam and Eve who wanted to find wives in Enoch. They were very curious about their Uncle Cain, the killer, but they found him to be sensitive and intelligent. He must have changed in the last five hundred years, they thought.

Cain was told that neither Adam nor Eve existed anymore but that they had been planted in the earth next to his brother Abel. Cain was angry and asked who killed them? Cain did not know of anyone dying for any other reason, but his sons assured him that after 930 years, they naturally grew tired and slept and then were no more. They explained to Cain that Eve had told her sons to plant Adam in the earth, and then to plant herself beside him. Cain cried. It was like a second death to have left his mother and father, and then to have them leave him and the earth. The sons of Cain and daughters of Eve told Cain and Farley what the Lord God said about being made in the image of the Creator of the earth and all that is on it, and all that swims in the seas of it, and all that flies over it. Cain recalled a very faint memory of his father telling him the same thing when he was a child.

Then Cain remembered how kind God was to him to give him the mark of protection. Indeed, many times since he left home Cain felt the power of that mark keeping him from being killed.

The next morning Cain and his sons and daughters helped Enoch build a wall around his city.

ALIVE: Chapter Three - Children of Men

We last left our less than great grandfather, or possibly uncle Cain, taking a break to scarf down strawberries while attempting to run from his blood stained hands to Nod.

Cain was a torn man, at the same time a murderer and the first-born son of the first two children of God who had been born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man but of God. Cain knew his Grandfather, the Creator of heaven and earth. Cain lied to Him. After he had killed his brother, the Lord God asked Cain where Abel was. Cain replied, "I do not know, am I my brother's keeper?" Cain was not only a self-centered murderer, he was also a sassy fool." Am I being too judgmental?

This whole scene began when Cain and Abel gifted God with the fruits of their labor. God preferred Abel's flock over Cain's fruit of the earth. That infuriated Cain. After all, Cain thought to himself, 'Didn't I work harder than Abel to till the ground (with sticks and sharp rocks,) plant the seeds and pull weeds in the scorching sun? Abel just strolled his little animals to the stream while I was hauling the heavy water to my plants.' The sooner one learns to accepts the fact that God doesn't have the same sense of fairness as we do, the better. Understanding is an option, obedience is not. God's unusual sense of fairness must be tied to His emphasis on forgiveness, which when you come down to it, is the epitome of unfairness, but is very Godly.

In an attempt to defuse his anger, God had told Cain that he would be accepted too if he did well. But if he didn't do well, God warned him, "Sin is lurching at your door. It wants to destroy you." Cain would have to master sin. Cain didn't know what God meant by doing well or what mastering sin meant. Instead he followed his impulse to lead his brother to the field where he stabbed him with an arrowhead. Did Cain think that by eliminating his competitor, he would win God's favor by default? Did the serpent make him do this too as it made his mother, Eve, eat the forbidden fruit? Did Adam and Eve eating that piece of fruit make Cain mean?

Cain's stupidity is not surprising. What is surprising is that after punishing Cain with eviction, God blessed him with a mark to protect him from any murderers that he may encounter out in the world. Cain was sent away from his precious soil, and from the presence of God into a world populated by children of men.

Steeped in thought Cain eventually arrived at Nod. A man approached him who looked like himself upright with long muscular dangling arms, except the main was very hairy and looked stern; Cain was scared. God was silent.

Cain and the man communicated with facial expressions and sounds. Translated here is what they said to each other.

"Who are you? And where did you come from?"

"I am a wanderer, but I want to stay here. My family is from Eden. I met a man from Nod many moons ago. He told me about this village. I have come to look for him. I used to farm the land, I could grow much food. I had to leave my farm because the soil became sour. I want fresh rich soil. May I live among you?"

Cain said nothing about his crime, or about God. The man said nothing about God because he didn't know where he came from, or that God existed. The man from Nod was hairy, Cain was not. Cain was a tall muscular man with shiny white teeth straight as piano keys, smooth olive colored skin, with green eyes and glistening light brown hair. Cain was glad the man didn't say anything about God. His fear gradually melted away as his confidence grew with the thought that he could be accepted for his farming skills and his seeds.

Three new hairy men walked onto the scene. When they saw the stranger they wondered if they should kill him.

"What is that animal?" Said one of the three to the others.

"I know him! I met him near Eden. He told me that he is called a human."

Recognizing that one, Cain shouted out. "Hello there, remember me? I have come to live among you. Give me land and I will give you food. I bring seeds." No reply.

The tallest of the men of Nod was not as tall as Cain. The man Cain had been speaking with walked over to his friends leaving Cain alone to wonder if he should run or stay. He was too tired to run.

The four men argued loudly. Cain did not understand what they were saying to each other. He wondered if he should slip away and find another place to settle, but besides being tired the soil looked rich and fertile, so he waited. He wondered whether the ground's curse on him for receiving his brother's blood stretched this far.

The four natives quieted down and walked over to Cain.

In their language the one most familiar to Cain spoke. He said, "You take my sister as wife and you may have land."

Cain replied. "Take me to your sister that I may see her."

The troop walked in procession to the center of the village where the women were cooking the day's meal together. The women were as hairy as the men. They all had dark brown eyes and wavy long black hair.

The brother shouted, "Farley, come."

With her head bowed demurely she obediently walked over to her brother and the weird hairless man.

"You will take this man as your husband. Come, I will show you the land you may settle in."

For centuries readers of Moses' creation story have wondered where the other people came from who lived in Nod when Adam and Eve were the only humans mentioned. Anthropologists have contemplated the evolution of humankind from Neanderthal. The fact is that not all homo sapiens were formed in the image and likeness of God as were Adam and Eve.

But when Cain, a child of God married a daughter of man, his children and grandchildren, became human, and thus gradually the brilliance of the human mind made in the image of God, and the sensitivity of the human heart dominated growing stronger with each generation. For the most part, the hairy body disappeared. Being alive gradually started to mean being sensitive and aware of the divine and most complex design of life.

ALIVE: Chapter Two - The Next Day

Cain went to live in the land of Nod to try to escape the emotional grip of the blood-stained earth that reminded him of his jealousy and his crime. Childless again, Eve had plenty of time to think about life and death. She still couldn't imagine how she could die someday since Abel was murdered, and no human had ever before died a natural death.

The chirping birds reminded her of the days before she knew death at all. She wondered to herself if she had been more alive when she was ignorant of death. Then she thought about Abel and that God said that Abel had been sent to a place called Hades. That concept was too much for her, so she went looking for Adam.

"Adam, Adam where are you!" she called. Eve went over to his favorite cave and called his name again; no answer. Then she went to Cain's garden where she found him tying up tomato plants on the clever conical frames he had constructed with branches and vines.

"Here I am, what is it Eve?"

"Adam, can we talk?"

"Okay," he said somewhat glad for the break. She went closer to him and together they walked hand in hand up the hill to their favorite grassy spot. When they arrived, Adam was first to break the silence, "What's on your mind my dear?"

"Adam, before I was created, did God tell you anything about being alive without a body? How is that possible? Being alive to me means being able to see and hear and feel, it means to be able to run through the fields and hug and make cartwheels. Remember when God said that Abel went to Hades? How is that possible? We buried his blue lifeless body in the earth, did it go deeper?"

"No, Eve. God didn't tell me anything about that. Remember, before you came we never had anything to do with death. But think about it, God is alive, and we speak to Him and He to us, but He has no body, and He said we were made in His image. So being alive may have nothing to do with being in a body."

Eve's grief turned to confusion and then despair. She began to weep.

"Come on Eve, snap out of it. There is nothing we can do but live and breath, grow food and eat it, and tend Abel's flock. We should be much too busy to think. Let's go back and work on those tomato plants some more. Don't you like that name I gave them? TOE-MAE-TOE! I thought it sounded rhythmical." Adam said trying to console her with a little levity, but he only succeeded in making Eve think even more.

Meanwhile, Cain was well into his journey alone hiking up and around mountainsides and traversing stream beds where he washed off his brother's blood and watched it turn the clear water mauve. While hiking, Cain had plenty of time to think. He thought about his brother and he missed him. Abel should have been on this journey with him. They had had so many boyish adventures together, climbing trees and trying to ride on the animals. But soon his sense of guilt returned and with it the fear. He had to remind himself that God marked him so no one could kill him. He imagined himself inside an eggshell of stone. Then he wondered how God could have been so kind to him after what he had done to destroy his own flesh-and-blood brother. It was as if the depths of his jealousy was elevated by the extreme height of God's forgiveness like a magnet that sucked up his sin. Sin, what did God say? Cain struggled to remember. It was something about sin crouching at your door. Ummmm. If I don't do well, sin will be crouching at the door to take me. Then what? What did God say about sin? I need to master it, and not fall into its grip.

The fear Cain felt forced him to try harder to understand God's advice. It was the only defense he had against collapse. Master sin. Master sin? I have no idea what that means? He thought to himself.

Then his thoughts turned to Abel again and how he would work with his sheep, how he corralled them and drove them hither and yon, from the grassy fields to the streams. Abel was the master of his sheep. "What do I know about being the master of anything?" He thought. "My plants don't have a mind of their own. They never go off to hide. I have never had to master anything or any one. Well, maybe I tried to master Abel, so I killed him. Oh Abel!!! Please come back and help me learn how to master sin."

"Fall into its grips... Is that what happened when I killed my brother? I don't know what that means." Cain's mind spun him to and fro. He felt like he was grabbing at strings in the air. Every time he caught one, another would slip away. He fell to the ground in mental exhaustion. Fortunately for Cain, he was in a grassy field. He closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh smell of the grass. On the ground he decided to sleep away his confusion. Sleep wouldn't come so fast. So he tried to free himself from his thoughts by simply feeling the warmth of the late afternoon sun on his bare skin. He listened to all the different sounds of birds and little animals around him. He tried to identify them, then he tried to count them. Sleep finally took hold of him.

"Cain, I'll race you to the that olive tree, okay? Ready, set, ...

"Wait a minute! I am not ready."

Abel started running anyhow and three little sheep ran by his side.

Seeing his brother running with the sheep, Cain took off to catch up. The faster he ran the farther away he got from Abel. Slowing down to breathe convulsively he looked up to see in the distance Abel engulfed in a sea of sheep and strange winged beings that looked human hovering in the air.

"BOO! Did I scare you?" said Abel right in his face. "Come here sheep, now stand in a straight line. Show this brother of mine what it means to obey."

An handful of sheep of different sizes all lined up head to tail in a long serpentine formation, like an army of wool.

"Heads left!"

All sheep heads faced Cain. Ten or twelve sets of eyes stared at him to pierce his guilt ridden soul.

Cain turned his head away. He couldn't bare to see those eyes upon him.

He started to run. But he found himself running toward Abel.

"Stop!" Shouted Abel. "I command you to stop running." Cain wondered how he could hear Abel so clearly. It was as if his brother was speaking to him within his own head.

Just then, Cain awoke in a particularly dewy mist. Drenched and groggy he stood up to shake off the water. He was glad and sorry that he only saw Abel in a dream. While he was still partially in his dream and in his reality, Cain tried as hard as could to return to the dream where he could be with his brother again, and ask him if he knew how to master sin. Cain hadn't forgotten how much he wanted to know what that meant.

Then he remembered how his mother and father would call out to God and God would come to them. Perhaps he could try that too.

"God!" Cain shouted as loudly as he could. Then he waited for a while. Nothing.

"God!!!! I need to talk to you!!! Please come here!" he yelled a full octave louder, surprising himself.

After a while of silence Cain continued on his lonesome journey to Nod.

A half a mile later Cain felt a foreign presence within him. To test it he asked, "How will I eat if I cannot tend my precious fruits and vegetables?"

A reply came, "As a wonderer you must forage for your food. God will provide. He already has when He planted the food for you ages before you were even conceived in your mother's womb."

Then Cain asked, "Why did God prefer Abel's lamb to my offering? We both gave Him of the fruit of our labor?"

The inner voice replied, "Because blood the lamb will have great significance for our Lord. You couldn't have known that. Where you went wrong, was to care so much. Your concern was only for yourself, not for the Lord's joy, or for your brother's."

"Was that sin?"

"Yes. Sin is anything that separates you from the image of God. You allowed yourself to be different than a loving God whose rejoices in His children equally. You pulled yourself out of God's circle of love. Imagine a powerful centrifuge going around and around and now imagine that you jettisoned yourself with self centeredness and disturbed all of creation. Like electrons taking off, like a planet shooting out of orbit, like chaos."

"I have no idea of what you are saying. What is an electron; what is chaos?"

"Of course you don't." replied the spirit. "Sorry, don't bother to try.

The point is that sin is at the same time a foreign substance that you can and must control, and it is infused in your being, crouching at the doors of your mind and heart. If you don't master sin it will master you. It will drive you to do things, like kill your brother, that will continue to fling you from God-likeness. You must first learn how to see sin as an unwelcome guest within you, much in the way that I am a visitor within you right now. You must create an inner shield deep within your mind and heart to separate yourself from sin, then master it."

The spirit went on, "Did you notice how kind God was to you, even to the point of giving you the mark of protection, just as He gave your parents clothing when they sinned, when they separated themselves from His love?

You Cain, like your parents before you separated from God, but in the same manner, with your will, you can bring yourself back into alignment.

Try to be like Him as you go into the world and encounter children of men who will act in opposition to you. Treat them as God treated you and your parents in your own rebellion. I have said enough. Think on these things that you may live."

The spirit left Cain as suddenly as it had arrived. He tried to continue the conversation in his mind, but nothing came. It was more obvious than ever, that he wasn't talking to himself, but to a sort of spirit who was counseling him.

By then Cain's stomach growled loudly. No sooner had the thought come into his mind than He looked at his feet to find himself in the midst of a field of strawberries. He crouched down and popped strawberry after strawberry into his mouth with such rapidity that the little chipmunks ambling around stared at him in amazement.

ALIVE: Chapter One - The Story Begins

"Come on Adam! Get up and play with me!" She called. "It's such a beautiful day! I'll race you to the fig tree. "

Adam didn't budge. He was trying to nap and so he pretended to not hear her.

Giving up Eve muttered, "Okay, I'm going for a walk. Sweet dreams sleepyhead."

Eve walked through the field of bright yellow buttercups, and other wild flowers whose names she couldn't remember, purple ones that made bouquets all by themselves, and little iridescent white platters of petals. The earth was so beautiful on this spring morning that she was thrilled and grateful to be a part of it. Gaggles of blue winged, and red crested birds flew over head. Their chirping was so loud that she wondered what they could be saying. They sounded so busy and so serious.

While she was gazing up at the birds Eve stumbled over a large rock and fell to her knees. At that moment a long garden snake approached.

"Oh no not you again!" She exclaimed. "Haven't you done enough damage? Go away. I am never speaking to you again."

The snake slithered closer to her and replied, "What are you talking about? I did you a favor. And look, you're not dead are you?"

"I know you tricked me, and besides, I didn't even know what being dead meant, and I still don't.
All I know is that everything seems so different now. You told me that I would become wise. Well I don't feel wise. I don't even know what being wise means either."

The snake chuckled slyly to himself and said, "See! God still loves you."

"And I still love Him," she barked back as if threatening the slimy snake.

"God!" Eve shouted out to the air, "Please come here and make this snake leave me alone!"

No sooner had Eve said that than she felt the familiar warm breeze caress her face and wrap her in an airy blanket infused with the sweet smelling fragrance of lilies of the valley.

Through the feeling of fatherly love Eve watched the snake shrug his shoulder and bury himself into the earth.

"Thank you Lord." She said silently. "But while you are here, may I ask you a question?"

God replied, "Of course my daughter; speak."

"What is death? Is being wise death?" Eve paused to wait for His reply and then added, "I don't feel wise, or dead. I don't even know what they mean. All I know is that since that snake tricked me and I disobeyed You. I feel sad sometimes, and i have to wear these clothes. Are You angry with me Lord?"

"Not angry, Eve; just disappointed that you didn't trust Me, and sad for you."

"But you made that snake, God!" She exclaimed. "Didn't you know what he would do? How did he get to be so sinister?" Before God could answer Eve added, "Why are you sad for me Lord? I'm happy. I love this beautiful world you made for us." And then, to change the subject, she said, "Look what I can do!" Eve flung herself to the ground sideways in a straight flat cart wheel, and then another, and another before she stood up straight with her feet planted firmly on the ground and her long arms opened wide as could be.

She heard God laugh and it made her happy again, so she decided to say goodbye to Him and continue on her hike through the fields. Soon she grew hungry and decided to walk over to her son's garden to get something to eat.

When she arrived she called out to him, "Cain, Cain, where are you?"

In muffled and distant voice, as if he was crying out from the bottom of a well she heard Cain say, ""Here I am mother."

Cheerfully, Eve walked toward the sound, but her cheery countenance plummeted when she arrived to behold her beloved son covered in blood. She looked beyond him and there was Abel, the sweet shepherd she loved lying still, and without breath, his skin had turned color and his wide opened eyes showed a stone face face filled with fear.

Eve was dumbfounded. "Abel, wake up!" She shouted shaking him. "What is wrong with you! Abel, my son, what is wrong?!" She had seen animals and flowers die, but never before had she witnessed a human death. When Eve realized that Abel was dead, she screamed so loudly in fear and horror that the birds of the air, and every living breathing creature fled from her presence. Adam also heard her and ran across the fields to where he found her with Cain. He gazed on the bloody lifeless body of his youngest son, and then up at the scene of Cain and his mother both stunned and silent.

God too arrived at this dastardly scene and was the first to break the sin-laden silence. He said to Cain, "I heard your brother's blood cry out to Me from the ground. Why have you done this?"

In the same hollow tone that drew his mother to him, Cain shifted the blame, "I was angry because you had regard for Abel's offering, but not for mine."

God said, "I told you that if you did well, you too would be accepted, but if you did not do well, I warned you that sin was lurking at the door; its desire is for you, and that you should Master sin and not fall into its grips. Now see what you've done!"

Cain replied, "Bring him back, Lord. You made us, make Him live again for mother's sake."

"I will not do that." replied Father God, "You must learn about the consequences of your action, as your mother and father are learning. Sin kills, and death is permanent. Besides, I created a place called Hades where Abel's soul went. He is there alone, but soon all of mankind will follow, and to that place of the dead, even I cannot go because I am Life, the creator of life and the essence of life. I have no place for death within me and I cannot leave myself. That is final. One day Cain, you will go there too and have to face your brother again. Get ready for that day."

Eve and her husband Adam lay weeping by their son's side. They heard nothing of what God said to Cain. She was stroking his hair and patting the lifeless body of her little shepherd who had died because of the sin of his brother. Adam said, "Now we know death. Now, we are dead too." Talking to himself he added, "When we disobeyed God, we didn't even know what death meant, and in that day we didn't die as God had threatened, but today I see and feel death."

"My son, my son where art thou?" Eve could not be consoled; the shock of a human death overwhelmed her more than if the sun failed to rise above the mountaintop, as if the earth opened up to swallow her. Nothing that she had experienced since her creation prepared either Eve or Adam for this moment.

God spoke. "Cain, now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wonderer on the earth." And to Himself God said as He cringed to see the lifeless body of Abel whose gift had pleased Him so, and caused this violent end, 'Someday I will make a shepherd boy king of my people, and he will kill ten thousands of his enemies.'

Cain wept loudly and replied, "My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from Your Face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me."

With compassion the Lord answered, "Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a seven-fold vengeance."

Then Adam and Eve watched as the Lord put a mark on their beloved son Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him.

Eve moaned at the thought of losing Cain too. Then she winced at the memory of her own disobedience; how easily that serpent convinced her to not trust God. Could this be wisdom; to know the suffering sin causes, and to feel regret? Could the death of Abel, which caused her own heart to wither and die be her delayed death? Eve still could not imagine that someday her own physical death would occur. She only just learned that it was possibly for a human body, made in the image of God to become lifeless, and that sight alone horrified her.

Cain wept in his mother's embrace. Adam pulled her away to release their son from Cain's clutches. "Before you go," said Adam, "Help me dig a hole to plant our Abel deep into the earth. I cannot gaze upon this body any longer."

After burying his brother in the earth, Cain left the presence of the Lord, and his parents to go to the land of Nod, east of Eden.

That was the day that Eve and Adam experienced their first death. On that fearsome day they learned what death was. They thought then that being alive meant to cherish the body and time.