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Eden, January 6
Genesis 2:8-15
And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to
dress it and to keep it.
Genesis 2:15
.
Although everything God had made was in the perfection of beauty, and
there seemed nothing wanting upon the earth which God had created to make
Adam and Eve happy, yet He manifested His great love to them by planting a
garden especially for them. A portion of their time was to be occupied in the
happy employment of dressing the garden, and a portion in receiving the visits
of angels, listening to their instruction, and in happy meditation. Their labor was
not wearisome but pleasant and invigorating. This beautiful garden was to be
their home.
In this garden the Lord placed trees of every variety for usefulness and
beauty. There were trees laden with luxuriant fruit, of rich fragrance, beautiful
to the eye, and pleasant to the taste, designed of God to be food for the holy
pair. There were the lovely vines which grew upright, laden with their burden of
fruit, unlike anything man has seen since the fall. The fruit was very large and
of different colors; some nearly black, some purple, red, pink, and light green.
This beautiful and luxuriant growth of fruit upon the branches of the vine was
called grapes. They did not trail upon the ground, although not supported by
trellises, but the weight of the fruit bowed them down. It was the happy labor of
Adam and Eve to form beautiful bowers from the branches of the vine and train
them, forming dwellings of nature’s beautiful, living trees and foliage, laden
with fragrant fruit
It was the design of God that man should find happiness in the employment
of tending the things He had created, and that his wants should be met with the
fruits of the trees of the garden....
Had happiness consisted in doing nothing, man, in his state of holy innocence,
would have been left unemployed. But He who created man knew what would
be for his happiness; and no sooner had He created him than He gave him his
appointed work. The promise of future glory, and the decree that man must toil
for his daily bread, came from the same throne
[13]
9
Ibid., 21, 22
.
9
The Adventist Home, 27
.
11