MORE TALL TALE --- GRACE UNVEILED

What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by. The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn't put it out.
John 1:4-5
The Message

In the first book The Author ever wrote, Genesis, He laid out not only what became known as The Creation Story (In the beginning…), He also mapped out The First Love Story Ever. The logical thinker would say, “Oh, how predictable …Adam and Eve.” The Author tells a more subtle love story though, and if you look deep enough in that pool, it will drown your sensibilities, and refresh your hope in Him.

I’ve come to accept that if He made the world, it’s only logical to believe that He made the first people, too. If you believe in the Tall Tale, you’ll believe that the first man, a guy named Adam, was a wholly imperfect being planted smack in the middle of a perfect world. God has the most unusual way of creating things sometimes. Up until Adam, he just spoke, and things came into being. From “Let there be light…”, all the way to “And He looked on all He had made…”, the only thing God used to make anything was His voice. He spoke, and there it was. The sun, the moon, the stars, the ocean, the land, the plants, the fish, and all the animals were made just through the notion of His voice.

Adam was made differently, though. Adam was made intimately. God had looked on all His work from above up until this point. The Tall Tale says that “His spirit moved up over the waters”, and in order to see all He had made, and decide that it was good, He most definitely had to have a bird’s-eye view. But Adam’s creation was up-close and personal. It involved an aspect of God’s ability and nature and action seldom seen in history. It involved touch. The Tall Tale says that the Author took dust from the ground…..Worthless, useless dust. Dust and dirt are infinitely different. Dirt can be used for planting and growth, and it symbolizes fertility. Dust isn’t dirt, but it’s considered dirty, or maybe filthy is a better adjective. Most of us hate dusting more than any other household task. Dust is a nuisance. It’s annoying. Dust, in the bigger context, is a symbol of dryness, lack of life, choking, stifling, and making it hard to breath. We sweep it up, and throw it away. It has no practical use. Dust, as a general rule, is hated.

So The Author picks up the most useless thing He can find on this planet He made, holds it in His hand, presses it to His lips…and breathes on it.

I remember the first time my wife breathed on me. I was sitting on the couch watching “Spy Kids 2” (She married me in spite of the fact I carried her on some really loser dates). She sat down next to me. After a while, she laid her head against my shoulder, let loose a sweet, soft sigh, and when she did...She breathed on me. I swear, it was like one million volts shot through my body! I felt like my dog, a big boxer named Daisy. She’s a perpetual motion machine, totally spastic, but if you start rubbing her belly, she gets totally still. I mean, paralyzed kind of still, as if to say, “Oh, Lordy, please don’t ever let this sensation end in my entire life!” On the outside, you’re experiencing this paralysis, hoping the sensation will never end, but on the inside, there’s avid fans of breathing on the neck and doggie belly rubbing doing the tomahawk chop and the wave and Yosemite Sam shooting pistols and steam whistles going off and your entire central nervous system starts break dancing and the world’s greatest football announcer ever, Keith Jackson, shouts “Whoooooa Nellie! It’s Good!”

It’s an intimate sensation. It’s fulfilling. Comforting. Exciting. Enticing. Pleasurable. It makes you pause and remember the best times, look forward to the future, and dream that this breath, this moment could last forever. More than anything, that intimate, miraculous, loving breath gives us life. Life like we’ve never experienced before. Life that we hope will never end.
So that’s how The Author made Adam. Scooped up some garbage, embraced it intimately in His hands, and breathed on it lovingly. The love story didn’t start there, though. The love story started before He ever even bent over to pick up the dust. The entire thing, all this wonder called Creation, He made lovingly, passionately, with man in mind. He made light to keep him warm, to allow him to see clearly, and to give him the opportunity to get a really even tan. The Author made darkness to provide a still coolness in which the man could find perfect, peaceful rest. He made terra firma so man wouldn’t have to live ankle deep in the water and mud. He made the sky so man could daydream, make fantasy shapes of the clouds, and wonder what was on the other side. The Author created stars so man could have a nightly opportunity to gaze in great wonder at the beauty and artistry of His work. He made fish so man could occupy his quiet time with leisurely sport, and so there would be catfish lodges all over the American South for his dining pleasure. He made birds to teach man to sing, and to make him long for the ability to soar above the earth. He made domesticated animals for companionship, and livestock for food. And finally He made wild animals to challenge man, and to fill him with a sense of adventure.

He made all of this for man’s good pleasure, then gave man a thing called dominion. Total control. What a great dad The Author is! What great gifts He gives! It’s like the Richard Pryor movie, “The Toy”, where Jackie Gleason leans over to his son inside a massive toy store and says, “Look around, son….Check it all out…You can have anything in here that you want…” Adam didn’t do a single thing to deserve this kind of treatment, but God, being the first and most excellent dad, did all for Adam out of pure love. All of this, just for something He made out of dust. Then The Author did something really cool. He let Adam name everything he saw, including the animals. “Adam, son, you picked out the puppy, so now you get to name him…” He did pretty good with the task for the most part. You can picture exotic nature in the words Bengal Tiger, cute fuzziness in the name Koala Bear, and elegant majesty in a title like Arabian Stallion. Eventually, though, Adam just starts running out of ideas. That’s why we have animal names like Catfish, Dog Fish, Cow Bird, and Spider Monkey (“I can’t think of anything really good, so I’ll name you after something I named a few hours back, plus the other thing that looks kind of like you…”). He was just running out of vocabulary. You can tell he’s just getting tired of the whole routine by the time he gets to Black Snake, Blue Whale, and Redbird (“Okay, this is your color, and this is what you are…”). He’s pretty much punch drunk and acting stupid by the time he’s saying stuff like Aardvark, Dodo Bird, and Hippopotamus.

It’s difficult to say why The Author did things exactly the way he did. I certainly can’t read His mind. But if you look at the creation order, it does point to one fact…The Author of the Tall Tale was ultimately concerned with providing for man. He didn’t make man, then have to sit back and think, “Well, now the dust is alive…What in the world am I gonna feed it?” Remember, God is a God of forethought. He planned it all out, made it all perfect for the thing He planned to love the most, then planted that thing, man, in the middle of it. It’s like He bought an eternity’s worth of Christmas presents for a son that hadn’t even been born yet. The Father, the Author of the Tall Tale, built the nursery, bought diapers, purchased school supplies, filled up the college fund, built a house, and established an inheritance for a son that had not even been conceived yet! The entire act of creation and bringing man to life was an act of divine, infinite, unexplainable love.

All that effort, all that immortal energy poured out by a Creator during those days of creation intended to please a creation not even created. God clearly loves Adam with an amazing love, as demonstrated by His great desire to prepare for him the way He did, but it didn’t end there. There was more. The Author causes Adam to fall into a deep sleep. Once again, He does things in the most impossible and unpredictable way. Apparently, before this moment, The Author had tried some different combinations of Adam and monkeys, Adam and turtles, Adam and carrots, Adam and kudzu, and I don’t know what else, but just wasn’t satisfied with other potential partnerships that were possible for him. He gave him the best kind of mate with the best kind of surprise---The night-time surprise. You know the kind of surprise I’m talking about. The night-time surprise is the one that takes places in the middle of the night, when you’re sleeping. You wake up, see the surprise, and it absolutely blows your socks off. When you’re a kid, the night-time surprises usually involve the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. As you grow older, they can be even bigger---The unexpected concert tickets, flowers on the table, a love note left on your pillow, or the printout of hotel reservations for the weekend.

For Adam, the night-time surprise was more unbelievable and cool and intimate than any other surprise that has been given in the history of the world since. The Tall Tale says that once Adam fell asleep, it just plain got crazy. All at once, The Author performs the first exploratory rib-ectomy in the history of the universe, takes the rib He removed from Adam, and makes Woman. I’m not sure if He breathed on the rib, spoke to it, or what He did to make Woman, but somehow I imagine it involved that rib, honeysuckle, roses, Georgia peaches, and a whole bunch of lightning. I will say this…However He did it, He got it right.

Adam and Eve had it all. They had full run of the garden they lived in. They were perfect. They were naked. Not nude, as in a fine piece of art, but naked. Not, “Oh, my goodness, somebody get me a towel ‘cause the preacher just drove up while I’m ironing the tablecloth wearing nothing but my nature!” naked, but naked and unashamed. They were totally comfortable. Free. They could walk and talk and fish and tie tin cans on the monkeys’ tails and do whatever they wanted to do. They could do anything they wanted to do….Except one thing.

So many assume that The Author of the Tall Tale is just about rules and regulations and keeping us from feeling good and having fun, but nothing could be farther from the truth. When He made the first people, they only had one rule…”Eat all you want…Make all the love you want…Throw rocks at the lions…Whatever you want to do…Just don’t eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

One rule. That’s all they had to follow.

They blew it.

The Snake was the most deceitful of all the creatures The Author made. He was, in fact, The Author’s bitter enemy. It wasn’t always so. The Snake used to not have that horrible, almost invisible hiss. In fact, his song used to be more beautiful than any bird. His skin wasn’t always scaly and repulsive, and His appearance didn’t always provoke fear. He once was so beautiful, He almost looked like a reflection of The Author Himself. He looked like light, and light was obviously a thing that has great favour with The Author. It was the first thing He made “In the beginning…”, so obviously, The Author held light in high regard.

Trouble was, The Snake wasn’t satisfied with almost being The Author. He wanted to be The Author. The only problem with that was that it was impossible. The creation can never become The Creator. The Snake got into a big tussle with The Author, and The Author took away his song, and replaced it with that skin-curdling hiss. He covered The Snake’s good looks and light with dark, rough scales that would make man cringe. Then, just to remind The Snake that he would always be subservient to The Author, He put him permanently on his belly, to crawl for all eternity.

And The Snake hated The Author for it all.

The Author loved Adam and Eve with the greatest love story ever written; therefore, The Snake logically hated them, too. Then Snake wanted to draw them far from The Author, to create a gaping distance between Him and His choice possession, and he had the perfect plan.
“I’ve got to convince them that life could be better. Show them that they’re not as free as they could be. Get them to break the rule.”

One day, The Snake nestled up next to Eve, in the shade of that Tree. “Man, I sure am hungry. Some nice, cool, delicious, juicy fruit sure would be good right now. Eve, since I’m a little low to the ground, how ‘bout you reach up there and grab us one of them apples? I’ll even let you have the first bite…” (A talking snake wasn’t enough by itself to clue Eve in that something might be fishy about this deal).

“No way, Snake! The Author told me and Adam, that if we eat that fruit, we will die!” (A good, appropriate response).

“Good Lord, Eve, are you stupid? Has anybody ever died from eating a piece of fruit?” (Actually, no one had ever died at this point in history). “Surely you won’t die! God just knows that if you eat that fruit, you’ll be gods just like Him!”

The Snake is very clearly lumping his own issues onto Eve, much like the disgruntled employee who wrecks an otherwise happy workplace with his constant complaining about the boss. “I can do his job better than he does!” Before long, everyone’s unhappy, and people start to see his point of view. “We could all be better bosses than him! Heck, we could train a monkey to do what he does! I should make as much money and be a boss, just like him!”

Eve looks at the fruit. It does look good. In fact, rebellion fruit looks better and sweeter than any other fruit in the whole garden. So she pulls off that red delicious, and her and Adam have a bite, then all of a sudden, they don’t feel comfortable anymore. They don’t feel free anymore. In fact, when they hear The Author coming around the bend, the first thing they do is hide. Being naked is a shameful thing now, and they make a feeble attempt at fashion design with some fig leaves, as if to say, “Dang, I don’t care what I cover up with, just give me something that covers as much of me as possible, so I won’t be caught naked and ashamed out here in public!”

The Author sees them, huddling in the bushes. His heart drops. It has begun. He knew it would, but it hurts all the same. The creation, the choice possession, the original man and woman both gave up perfection and intimacy with The Author for something shiny. It would set off a chain of events that would go on for I don’t know how many years. The first disobedience would lead to the first greed, the first envy, the first hurt feelings, the first hard work, the first labor pains, and in the next generation after Adam and Eve, the first murder by death. Isn’t that something? The first disobedience is directly and so closely linked to the first murder. Cain, the firstborn of Adam and Eve, killed Abel, the second, out of jealousy. It was a generational curse. One generation’s disobedience caused the next to fall even farther away from The Author. And even today, it goes on and on and on. We constantly fall for the lure of things wrapped in attractive and enticing packages, whether it be in the form of addiction or pornography or someone else’s spouse, all because we think just like Adam and Eve…”Well, life is good….But couldn’t it be better?”

Because of their disobedience, they had to leave the perfect garden for a world of thorns and sweat and desolation and heartache, and The Snake thought that he had effectively ruined all of intimate eternity for The Author and man. He hissed in glee, “Reject me, Author? I’ll make your favorite thing, your great love reject you, and then you can reject them in return, just like you did me! They’ll crawl to me and adore me, and I’ll reward them with all the pain and torment and anger I can muster!”

But then The Author, The Creator, The First Dad, the Giver of Great Gifts, did something totally unexpected. He unveiled a brand new surprise, something that The Snake didn’t anticipate, something he just didn’t see coming. Remember, The Author is always thinking ahead. Adam and Eve are on their way out of the garden, heads low, bewildered, eyes to the ground, full of shame, and The Author reveals an unexpected gift for the very first time in the Tall Tale---a gift called Grace.

Adam and Eve are defeated, uncertain of how this chain of events just took place, and naked, and The Author does something unreal.

He puts clothes on them.

He puts clothes on them. It’s The Author’s way of saying, “This is a foretaste, just a sip of what’s to come. You’ve made a mistake, and there are consequences for your actions. But the love story will continue, despite what The Snake may imagine. I will take care of you. The darkness can’t put out this light inside of Me, the love I have for you. The Snake doesn’t yet fully understand The Whole Story. But you, you have faith in it. Even if you’re down right now, have faith in the end of the story. The darkness cannot put out the light.”

And the Tall Tale continued on.