A Serpent Slithers

Rationalization screams through Eden as the serpent, at last, makes his own voice heard. I can’t help but picture him slyly watching, listening in to grace-filled conversations as man and his Creator walk together in the cool of the night. Watching. Waiting. Though Eternal eyes fully took in his presence, clay eyes remained blinded to the danger.

Would that I could hear their conversation, for somehow I fully image warning wrapped within the Divine words, just as they imbued the words Jesus spoke to those walking with Him.

But ears didn’t hear, didn’t comprehend, so the watcher continued his pursuit. Plotting. Revenge, the darkness of its cloak, clutched tightly around his heart. His first words to the Almighty’s beloved say it all.

“Has God indeed said, ‘ You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?.”

Can’t you hear his voice, dripping with honey, with malicious cunning dressed in the guise of innocent wonderment? Isn’t that always where a good lie starts, infiltrating cunningly, smoothly, deceptively clothed in innocent’s raiment.

Discernment fled, or lay buried beneath desire.

No voice could be heard within this clay trumpeting truth, bearing the armor to extinguish the fiery darts. Clay ears remained deafened, not listening:

Cursed be the deceiver ...

So he feared Me
And was reverent before My name.
The law of truth was in his mouth,
And injustice was not found on his lips.
He walked with Me in peace and equity,
And turned many away from iniquity.

Adam remained silent … and darkness fell … ‘til the Second Adam restored light. Can you hear the whisper?

“They shall be Mine,” says the LORD of hosts,
“On the day that I make them My jewels.
And I will spare them
As a man spares his own son who serves him.”
Then you shall discern
Between the righteous and the wicked,
Between one who serves God
And one who does not serve Him. (Malachi)

But at this moment, discernment had fled, and its absence laid bare a heart needing covering … a heart awash in desire … a heart hungering for self rather than Light!

How unlike the One Who knew to feast only on Heaven’s fare.

Now when the tempter came to Him (Jesus), he said, “if You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”
But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

Eden was not deficient of God’s Word. It permeated the air, it entered with every breath drawn in and should have exhaled on every word spoken. But when most needed, it wasn’t God’s word breathing out of Edenic clay ... but a dark seed, twisting, turning, polluting the Divine Voice ‘til it served self, planting doubt, granting disobedience permission to serve another master.

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.”

And with its utterance, death gasped its first breath while a serpent slithered in glee ... slithering still.