When Eve had Cain and Abel after the Fall, she had no parenting manual, no audiobooks on sleeping habits for babies, no other mothers to confide on the struggles of parenting. All she had was one (perhaps two) days of memories living in a perfect Garden with a perfect Father and savory fruits and vegetables, and unrelenting bliss. Can you form a motherhood curriculum from 48 hours of life experience?
Just as the honeymoon began, she was tempted by a crafty serpent, was deceived by the devil, and at the end was unprotected by her husband. What a way to begin marriage and life! Eve knew life in its most glorious and most miserable.
The lessons of the garden and post-garden are the lessons for all mothers on this day. Eve needed to learn how to bring beauty to a fallen world in a post-Genesis 3 world by taking the lessons of Genesis 1 and 2. She had seen the way things ought to be and now the way things can become.
Mothers continue that mission to carry redemptive beauty to a fallen world by learning from our first mother. To be a faithful mother does not require a perfect garden, but trust in a perfect God in a fallen garden. Our first mother understood, through her own experience, that the seduction of evil comes in subtle and tricky ways; even in the form of questions that seek to take away your love of the true, good and beautiful.
Mothers must see that their home is another Edenic experimentation, their children are their opportunity to avoid the fratricide of the first children, and their God is the faithful father from Genesis 1 and Genesis 3.
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