Eve's Elegy

I wrote this as a dramatic monologue to perform for children.

 Eve’s Elegy

God made the world and it was beautiful. Most beautiful of all was the garden where we lived. The Garden of Eden. In it grew beautiful trees and flowers of every description. Many animals lived there and we were beautiful, too. There was no killing, no violence, no ugliness of any kind. A clean, sparkling river flowed through the garden. The weather was always perfect. There was just the right amount of sunshine and water and earth for things to grow healthy and strong. All the animals had enough to eat because of all the different kinds of plants. Amongst the trees in the garden there were two very special ones: The tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It was a truly beautiful place.

 

After that, God made us. First of all, He made my husband, Adam and then He made me. He breathed His life and His Spirit into us so that we could be His friends. That meant we were made in His image. He gave us the Garden of Eden to be our home. We were so happy there. So unbelievably happy. Adam was such a gentle, kind husband and we loved each other very much.

 

God told us we could eat the fruit of all the trees of the garden except one: the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Don’t eat of that one, He told us, because if you do, you will die.

 

Well, that seems pretty easy, doesn’t it? Only one rule! Nowadays it seems there are so many rules to remember. Back then, it was just one. And that one rule was so easy, too. After all, there were hundreds of other trees there. So what if we couldn’t eat of that one. We could never go hungry with all the other fruit we had there to eat. There’s no way we could miss out on that one with all the rich variety we had.

 

And so we were very happy. We had a good job, too. We were to name all the animals! What a wonderful time that was, getting to know them all so we could give them good names. I loved them all. The animals were happy and friendly.

 

But the best thing of all was God Himself. He was our friend. Each evening, as it got cooler, God would visit us in the garden. He walked with us through the trees and we talked. Oh, how we talked! We talked about everything. We knew God loved us and we loved Him. God made us and He wanted the very best for us. His friendship continued to nourish our bodies, minds, spirits and hearts. It was like He was our earth, our water, our sunshine. Everything was pure and holy because God, who was pure and holy, had made it.

 

And then I spoiled it all.

 

One day I was strolling through the Garden by myself when one of the animals spoke to me. None of the animals had spoken before. I didn’t know they could. Later, I realized it was the devil speaking through the serpent, but I didn’t know it then. We had named this animal serpent because that name means shining one. He was beautiful.

 

He asked me, "Did God say you were not to eat of every tree in the garden?"

 

I answered him. "We may eat of every tree in the garden except one. If we eat that one, we will die. If we touch it we will die."

 

The serpent snorted. "You won’t die. God doesn’t want you eating that fruit because He knows if you do, you’ll be just like Him, knowing good and evil."

 

Now I didn’t know anything about evil because I’d never seen it before. Everything I knew was pure, clean, the way God had made it.

 

So the serpent said, "You’ll be like gods, knowing good and evil."

 

Instead of believing God who loved me and wanted only the best for me, I listened to Satan who spoke through the serpent. I was so stupid, so incredibly stupid! My heart breaks as I remember how I broke the trusting, loving relationship I had with God.

 

I ate the fruit and then gave some to Adam who ate it, too.

 

Immediately, we were ashamed of what we had done. We knew we had disobeyed God. We couldn’t face Him. The wonderful, warm relationship we had with Him was gone because we didn’t trust Him, didn’t believe Him and didn’t obey Him.

 

That was our first death. The death of trust. The death of friendship. Our spirits shrivelled and we were shamed and afraid. We, who had never known fear, cowered in hiding, knowing God would come in the evening as He always did.

 

God called out, "Where are you?"

 

And Adam replied, "I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid, so we hid."

 

God then asked us if we had eaten of the tree He had told us not to eat. He knew! We couldn’t hide from Him and we couldn’t hide what we had done. He knew. He always knows.

 

Adam said, "The woman You gave me gave me the fruit and so I ate."

 

He blamed God and he blamed me! That was another kind of death, another separation. The beautiful relationship I’d had with my husband was ruined. He made it look like it was all my fault. He would never have done that before. My heart broke again.

 

So I blamed the serpent. I said he’d tricked me.

 

The thing is, I was to blame, and so was Adam. We both had a choice and we made a wrong one. We could believe God. We chose not to. We could obey Him. We chose not to. Nobody forced us. It was a decision we made and now we had to live with the results.

 

Our disobedience was sin. God sent us out of the Garden and we can never return. He put an angel to guard it so we couldn’t sneak back.

 

God said we would die if we ate of that tree. And we are dying. Every day. We are growing older. We see animals die and rot into the ground and one day we know we, too, will die. Life is very hard. We have to work hard for our food. The animals are no longer gentle and friendly. They are wild, savage. They kill each other. Adam and I, we still love each other, but we lost something very precious when we made our choice to disobey God. We lost a closeness I don't think we can ever regain. We lost trust and we lost our friendship with God. He no longer visits us in the evening. Our sin separates us from Him. And that is the worst thing of all.

 

I would weep every day except for one thing. God made us a wonderful promise. He said that one day Somebody would come who would defeat both death and Satan. I don’t know who that will be, but I wait for Him. Because of that promise, I know God still loves us and wants to be our friend. And then all that we lost will be ours again. Yes, yes, we will live again.