In the Garden and Other Stories from the Bible: A different kind of book.

By C. P. Cunningham

This is a collection of short, thought-provoking stories built around and based on the people in the Bible, and how they might have reacted to some of the incidents and events that are described or implied in Scripture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543983715

Book preview

In the Garden, and Other Stories from the Bible

Version 12.0.0

Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®

Copyright © 1973 1978 1984 2011 by Biblica, Inc. TM

Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

All of the stories in this book are works of fiction.

Print ISBN: 978-1-54398-370-8

eBook ISBN: 978-1-54398-371-5

Table of Contents

Preface

Prologue

Part 1

Part 2

In the Garden

Forbidden Fruit

The First Conversation

The Tree

The Second Conversation

The Creator

The Third Conversation

The End of the World

The Creator

Judgment and Mercy

Consequences

Epilogue

The Boat

A Boy and a King

The King

Epilogue

The Oldest Parents

Christmas

The Visitation

A Summons from the King

Preparing to See the King

At the Palace

The Aftermath

Epilogue

First Passover

The Temptation

One

Two

Three

Epilogue

The Calling of Levi

The Pharisees

The Lack

The Day God Died

Epilogue

Sweating It Out

Resurrection

Alive

Epilogue

A Different World

The Apostle

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Preface

This is a different kind of book.

The stories in this book were written, one by one, over fifteen years. Except for In the Garden, they are all very short stories, each one of which can be read in fifteen or twenty minutes. They were written to explore questions and ideas that had come to the author during a lifetime of studying and thinking about the Bible.

Each story focuses on an event, thought, or inference that is only briefly (if at all) addressed in the Bible, imaginatively expanding upon it to try to see if it has some relevance to today. The stories are intended to encourage readers to think, and think hard, about the Bible and what it says, and thus to consider taking the Bible seriously as a source of guidance in their lives.

It is hoped that, after reading each of these stories, readers will take up their own copies of the Bible, look up the Scripture verses quoted herein, and think about them in new, different and perhaps more meaningful ways.

Prologue

Part 1

Have you not heard of the madman who lit a lamp in the bright morning and went to the marketplace crying ceaselessly, I seek God! I seek God! There were many among those standing there who didn’t believe in God so he made them laugh. Is God lost? one of them said. Has he gone astray like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Has he gone on board ship and emigrated? So they laughed and shouted to one another. The man sprang into their midst and looked daggers at them. Where is God? he cried. I will tell you. We have killed him – you and I. We are all his killers! But how have we done this? How could we swallow up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the horizon? What will we do as the earth is set loose from its sun?

- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, as quoted in Michael Harrington, The Politics at God’s Funeral (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), 85.

Part 2

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

And yet after such a great number of years, no one without faith has reached the point to which all continually look. All complain, princes and subjects, noblemen and commoners, old and young, strong and weak, learned and ignorant, healthy and sick, of all countries, all time, all ages, and all conditions.

A trial so long, so continuous, and so uniform should certainly convince us of our inability to reach the good by our own efforts.... What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remains to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable Object, that is to say, only by God Himself."

- Blaise Pascal’s Pensees (New York; Penguin Books, 1966), 75.

In the Garden

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it… Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

Genesis 2:15-17, 22

It was a peaceful garden, the most peaceful garden that had ever been, or ever would be, at least while time lasted. It was home to abundant life of every imaginable kind: Plants, animals, all living together in peaceful harmony. And there were the Man and the Woman.

Think of every picture of a beautiful Woman you have ever seen, and merge them together in your mind, and you will have an idea – only an idea, mind you – of the reality of what she looked like, standing there in total innocence, completely nude, yet unaware that she was nude. If told she was nude, she would have looked perplexed. What is ‘nude’? she would have thought. The idea had no meaning for her. Likewise the Man wore no clothes yet felt no need for clothes.

While she was beautiful, she did not know it; at least, not the way we know beauty now. In her world beauty was normal and taken for granted. How could anything not be beautiful? Was not the Creator beautiful? Did He not love beauty? Was not everything unimaginably beautiful? And, anyway, what was beauty? She was too new to know.

She had never known pain, nor sadness - only joy. She had never known happiness, but was happy nonetheless. She lived in a perfect world.

Likewise the Man, also, was stunning in appearance. Imagine the images sculpted by the Greeks and Romans, the bodies of the great athletes of the day. He looked like all of them, and yet – his appearance, his body, transcended theirs, because he had to make no effort to achieve that appearance, to obtain such a body, and had no idea that there might be anything remarkable about himself. It had never occurred to him.

He, like the Woman, had never known pain or sadness or grief: Only joy. He knew who he was, why he was, and what he was created to do. He was filled with purpose, confidence, and pleasure, pleasure beyond measure, because he didn’t have to seek pleasure – it found him.

There were no scars on his body, or hers, either. More importantly, there were no scars inside either one of them. They were filled with love - love for each other, love for this wonderful world they lived in, and especially love for the Creator.

Because, really, this whole thing – this world they lived in, this garden, the air they breathed, the life that filled them, was created by the Creator. I say ‘created’, not ‘had been created’ because the creation was just happening now. It had also happened an unimaginably long time in the past, and would still be happening far into the future.

For Time as we know it was not yet. To the Woman, it seemed as if she had always been in the garden, had always known the Man, had always known the Creator. How long she had been in the garden she did not know, nor did she care. She had always been there, whatever ‘always’ meant.

For the Man it was different. While he, too, could not remember a time before the garden, he could remember a time before the Woman. There had been a period of extreme closeness with the Creator during which, at the Creator’s urging, the Man had named things. However, after naming everything he could, the Creator had declared the creation unfinished.

The Man had been put to sleep, and when he woke, there was the Woman. Yes, he remembered that moment very well. And the Creator had been satisfied.

So, how long had they lived in the garden? All their lives.

Forbidden Fruit

The Creator had given them only one proscription.

You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for if you do so, you will die.

Neither the Man nor the Woman questioned this command. From time to time they had discussed what ‘die’ might mean. Clearly it was something bad. They considered discussing it with the Creator, but found themselves reluctant to do so – they didn’t know why.

They looked at the tree sometimes, and regarded the fruit.

I wonder what it tastes like, the Woman mused aloud. Hush, said the Man. It would be best if we didn’t think about it.

How much time passed, nobody knows. As has already been said, in that place, time had no meaning. If asked how long they had been in the garden, they would have replied, ‘Forever.’ Whatever that meant.

To be sure, there were mornings, afternoons, evenings, night – thus there were ‘days’, but time was not something tracked. Today was today, yesterday was yesterday, tomorrow would be tomorrow. There were weeks – weren’t they to rest on the seventh day? - but there were no months, or years.

There