the story of Adam & Eve
as told by Jenna Winship
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God created everything - our whole world! He made the trees, the mountains, the oceans, all of the animals, and he even made you and me.
Genesis 2:27 says “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
The very first people God created were Adam and Eve. When he saw the people he created, God blessed them, and He called them very good. He put them in a garden - the Garden of Eden - the most beautiful garden in the whole wide world. God told Adam and Eve that the entire garden was theirs - they could eat the food in it, they could swim in the rivers, they could play with the animals, they could enjoy the garden however they wanted. The only thing Adam and Eve were not allowed to do in the garden was to eat the fruit from one very special tree. God showed them the tree they were not allowed to eat from, and God told them that it would be very bad if they ate the fruit from that tree.
One day, a sneaky snake came to talk to Eve. The snake tricked Eve and told her that she should eat the fruit from the forbidden tree. He told her that if she ate that fruit, she would be like God. Wait a second! I thought Adam and Eve were already like God! Remember, God created them in his own image.
The snake was truly tricky, though, because Eve started to believe that something was wrong with her and she needed to eat the fruit to be like God. This was a lie. The truth was that Eve was already like God. The lie was that God had made a mistake when he created her and she needed to eat the fruit to be like him. Eve believed the lie, and she ate the forbidden fruit. Adam ate the fruit with her.
The fruit made Adam and Eve feel things they had never felt. They felt bad. They felt weird about being naked, so they tied leaves around their body to cover their nakedness. They felt afraid - scared that God would be mad at them. In fact, they felt so afraid that they hid from God! But He found them. He wanted to be with them even though they had disobeyed. They knew they had disobeyed and they felt wrong for disobeying, so they tried to pretend that it wasn’t their fault.
All of these bad feelings happened because Adam and Eve believed lies. God was angry at the snake for tricking his children. God told the snake to go away! God told Adam and Eve that their life was going to be much harder now, since they ate the forbidden fruit. But God did one more thing. He saw that they wanted to cover up their bodies with leaves, so he sewed clothes for Adam and Eve. He provided what they needed to not feel those weird and bad feelings anymore.
