Relational People

I suppose I can't let a Valentine's Day pass by without blogging about something sentimental. I've been reading Donald Miller's book, "Searching For God Knows What". If you've ever read anything by Donald Miller before, you'll understand that I really can't sum up the book, because it's mainly a series of stories, thoughts, witty comments, and pondering, which somehow comes together to make you feel like you've successfully gone on a journey with Donald Miller. Anyways, I'll include a somewhat lengthy clip about this thoughts on Adam and Eve:

"And then I began to wonder about Eve, what the scene might have looked like when she and Adam first met...I noticed Adam and Eve didn't meet right away. Moses said God knew Adam was lonely or incomplete or however you want to say it, but God did not create Eve directly after He stated Adam was lonely. This struck me as funny because a lot of times when I think about life before the Fall, I don't think of people going around lonely. But that thought also comforted me because I realized loneliness in my own life doesn't mean I am a complete screwup, rather that God made me this way. You always picture the perfect human being as somebody who doesn't need anybody, like a guy on a horse out in Colorado or whatever. But here is Adam, the only perfect guy in the world, and he is going around wanting to be with somebody else, needing another person to fulfill a certain emptiness in his life. And as I said, when God saw this, He did not create Eve right away. He did not give Adam what he needed immediately. He waited. He told Adam to name the animals.

Now I had read this a thousand times...but this time, I actually thought about what would be involved in a job as big as naming the animals. In my mind this had been such an effortless action...But could it really have been so effortless? ... If it took John Muir the better portion of his life to realize his theory about the landscape in small Yosemite, I wondered, then, how much longer it must have taken Adam to name the animals in all the earth?...So even if you believe in evolution, that means there were between one million and fifty million species around in the time of the Garden, and Adam, apparently, had to name all of them. And the entire time he was lonely.

I never thought of Adam the same again...This was a man who, despite feeling a certain need for a companion, performed what must have been nearly one hundred years of work, naming and perhaps even categorizing the animals. It would have taken him nearly a year just to name the species of snakes alone. Moses said that Eve didn't give birth to their 3rd child until Adam was well into his hundreds, which means they would have had Cain and Abel some 30 or so years before, which also means either it took Adam more than 100 years to name the animals, or he and Eve didn't conceive for a good long century.

The thing is, when Adam finished naming the animals, after all his work and effort, God put him to sleep, took a rib out of his side, and fashioned a woman. I had read that part a thousand times, too, but I don't think I quite realized how beautiful this moment was. Moses said the whole time Adam was naming the animals, that entire 100 years, he couldn't find a helpmate suitable for him...So here was this guy who was intensely relational, needing other people, and in order to cause him to appreciate the gift of companionship, God had him hang out with chimps for 100 years. It's quite beautiful, really. God directed Adam's steps so that when He created Eve, Adam would have the utmost appreciation, respect, and gratitude.

...And then I thought how very beautiful it was that God made Adam work for so long because there is no way, after 100 years of being alone, looking for somebody whom you could connect with in your soul, that you would take advantage of a woman once you met one. She would be the most precious creation in all the world, and you probably would wake up every morning and look at her and wonder at her beauty, or the gentle, silent way she sleeps.

...For the first time in his life, Adam was seeing a person who was like him, only more beautiful, and smarter in the ways of love and encouragement, and more deliberate in the ways of relationships. He must have thought to himself that she was perfect, and after a few days of just talking and getting to know each other, they must have fallen deeply in love....[After which point, Adam] must have gone on a long walk with God and thanked Him, and I'll bet that was a very beautiful conversation. I'll bet Adam felt loved by God, like he was somebody God was always trying to bless and surprise with amazing experiences, and I'll bet they talked together about how beautiful Eve was and how wonderful it was that the two of them could know her, and I would imagine that Eve felt safe, loved, not used or gawked, but appreciated and admired.

...Considering this couple, and what Adam went through to appreciate Eve to the utmost, I wondered at how beautiful it is that you and I were created to need each other. The romantic need is just the beginning, because we need our families and we need our friends. In this way, we are made in God's image. Certainly God does not need people in the way you and I do, but He feels a joy at being loved, and He feels a joy at delivering love. It is a striking thought to realize that, in paradise, a human is incomplete without a host of other people. We are relational indeed. And this book, the Bible, with all its understanding of the relational needs of humans, was becoming more meaningful to me as I turned the pages. God made me, He knows me, He understands me, and He wants community."