What was it like for Adam?

Years ago I got into genealogy. I researched my family’s history, went to cemetaries, talked to relatives, even put out a family newsletter. I enjoyed doing it, enjoyed learning about the people that lived before me. During that time I met other people that were doing the same kinds of research on their families. Many of them wanted names, dates, and places. I wanted those things too but that wasn’t all I wanted. I wanted to know the people.

Who were they?

What were their lives like?

How did they live?

What did they believe?

Those were the thoughts that went through my mind as I gathered the names, dates, and places. Piecing together the where and when was challenging but not all that hard once I knew where to look. Finding out who they were was much more difficult. I’ve read about people that have journals, diary’s, and old letters from their ancestors. I had none of that. What I had was access to my grandmother and her sister. Through them I learned stories of some of those ancestors. My great aunt could remember her great grandmother, my great great grandmother. That same aunt knew stories about her grandpa that no one else knew. My grandmother told of what it was like for her family during the depression, how her dad made bricks by hand and helped lay them in the roads in the town where I lived.

And so, little by little, I managed to piece together some of the details that told me who my ancestors were. It was a puzzled that when I managed to put it together was fascinating and yet left me wanting so much more.

There are times when I read Scripture that I wonder some of the same kind of things I wondered about my ancestors. Who was this person? What was it like for them on a day to day basis? How did they live? What did their home look like?

Recently I’ve been thinking those kind of things about Adam and Eve. I hope to write a post about each one. For today I’m going to focus on Adam. I doubt that I will be able to do justice to the questions running through my head but I’m going to try.

Can you imagine for just a moment what life for Adam must have been like?

I can’t. Not really. My mind kind of staggers when I try to. Here was a man that was unlike any other. He had no parents, no siblings.  He had no memories of childhood. There was no gradual growing and learning process for him. He was just there.

One minute he didn’t exist and the next he did.

What would he have thought when he first opened his eyes? Took his first breath? Moved his arms or legs for the first time?

There are times when I’m in a place that the air is so clean I just breathe it in. I do that in a greenhouse, in the woods, at the ocean. It’s so different from what the normal air is that you can tell a change is there with each breath. And so I breathe deeply, enjoy the clean air. Did Adam do that when he took his first breath? Or was it a shock to his system? Did he try to hold his breath so as not to have to breathe in what was foreign to him?

I have multiple children, have taken care of and raised even more. I remember well the times that those babies first discovered that they had hands or feet. They were captivated by them. Much time was spent moving tiny hands, wiggling little fingers. They could entertain themselves for hours just looking at their hands or feet. Did Adam do that?

I don’t remember discovering that I had hands and feet but I’m sure I had that same fascination with them. My memory, like everyone else’s, just knows that hands and feet have always been there. There is no conscious memory of the time I discovered they were there. To me they just always have been. But it wasn’t that way for Adam. He started life as a man. Would he have gone through the same discovery process that a baby does when it first starts realizing they have body parts, when they discover an animal for the first time?

Would he have been fascinated by each living creature as it was brought to him? Did he marvel at it the way a small child discovering a caterpillar for the first time does?

Adam was given knowledge that didn’t come from a gradual learning process as he grew and matured.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. Genesis 2:15

Did he have the knowledge already to work and keep the land? Or did God tell him what was expected of him, how to do it? For sure he had no human teacher, no book to turn to, no website to pull up.

Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. Genesis 2:19-20

God brought the animals to Adam to be named. The knowledge to choose so many different names must have already been in Adam. He gave names to them and whatever he called them that was the name they had. Where did Adam come up with the names?

Here was a man that had never seen animals before. He hadn’t grown up gradually learning about different kinds of animals, discovering their physical characteristics, their sounds and traits. He opened his eyes one day and there they were.

In order to pick all those names out he had to have some kind of knowledge from day one. Can you imagine getting up one morning and discovering a world full of creatures that you’ve never seen anything like them before? How would you name them? How would you have any idea what they were if they were unlike anything you’d ever seen before?

Through that time of discovering and naming the animals God saw that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone. Why? How? What did Adam do that made God decide he needed a helper?

And here comes another area where I wonder what it was like for Adam. God put him into a deep sleep and made Eve from Adams body. I heard a preacher once that spoke of the sleep Adam was in during that time as being a kind of resting sleep that we should all pray for. I wondered then if that preacher didn’t realize that while Adam was in that deep sleep he essentially went through surgery. It probably wasn’t the restive sleep that preacher said it was. It was a sleep so deep that one of his bones could be removed. Did Adam feel pain in that sleep? Did he wake up from the pain of having a bone removed? If he was simply in a restive sleep wouldn’t he have awakened? Wasn’t that more of a sedated kind of sleep?

Either way…when Adam awoke God presented him with a woman. Here again was something Adam had never seen before. She was the first woman ever made. He had no knowledge of what a woman was, had never seen girls at any age. He woke from a deep sleep and there was a woman. What was his reaction?

Scripture tells us…

Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Genesis 2:23

How did Adam know that she was taken out of him? Did God tell him? Did he look down and see the place where his bone had been removed? Did he have a scar? Here was a man, that without knowledge given by God, shouldn’t have known he was a man and he gave a name to Eve based on the fact that she was taken out of man.

While Adam was naming animals and woman…he was also adjusting to the very fact that he was a man. How did he feel? What did he think? Did he realize he was the only man on earth? Was he excited to see Eve? To realize he wasn’t alone in the world anymore?

What did it feel like to be the only man in the world?

I well remember how I felt when I knew no one that shared the deep faith that I do. I was alone in a world of people that professed to know God, to know Jesus, but who did not see or understand what I was seeing. There was a profound sense of isolation even though I was surrounded by friends and family. I was never alone, yet I was alone with my beliefs. How much more isolated may Adam have felt being alone in the world?

Was he satisfied with his times with God or did he long for someone else to be there? Did he long for someone to talk to?

God must have seen something in Adam for Him to decide to create Eve…because it wasn’t good that man should be alone.

What was Adam’s reaction to being presented with a wife? He didn’t choose her, didn’t get to know her, he fell asleep and woke up to a woman being presented to him. Basically a ‘here, this is yours’ kind of situation. Adam must have been happy because he said… This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

At last. That was Adams reaction. Not why, not how, not did I want this, but at last. Finally. It’s about time. I’ve been waiting for this. I wanted it. At last.

Now, in addition to adjusting to life, to adjusting to being a man, to discovering all there was to discover in his new world…now Adam had to figure out how to be a husband. Today we have examples of what marriage is, good and bad, we have books, movies, songs, counselors, preachers and teachers. And we have the Bible. We have examples of what marriage should be and what it shouldn’t be. We don’t have to guess at what we’re to do with a husband. We’ve grown up seeing married people. We already have a knowledge of what marriage is.

But can you imagine never having heard of marriage before, never having seen a married couple, then being presented with a spouse?

Not only did Adam have to take care of himself but he had to take care of Eve.

How did that make him feel? Was he happy and proud to do it? Scared? Excited? Nervous? Unsure?

Can you imagine what their time together consisted of? What it was like to go through the discovery process together? They would have made many discovery’s about their home and world together, would have made discoveries about each other, about their love and need for each other, about married life. All together.

There were no outside ideas filling their heads of what life should be like. No preformed opinions. They had each other, God, and nothing else.

What was it like for Adam?