Garments of love

For class I just read the book of Genesis in its entirety in one sitting. It took me more than three hours, and when I was done, I wanted to go for a run and cleanse my mind of the dirty soap opera! When you only read chapters or verses of Genesis at a time, you miss out on the oh-so-tangled web that the patriarchs of Genesis wove. Woah! Like one of my classmates said, “If we had to provide therapy to that family today?! That is one messed up family system.”

But reading the book in its entirety also made me see a reoccuring cycle: God promises and gives; His people doubt and reject; God loves and redeems (even though “love” is rarely associated with the God of the Old Testament).

One of the first times we see this is with Adam and Eve. So, God gives Adam and Eve a beautiful garden. They’re naked, and they don’t notice, let alone care. It doesn’t take them long, however, before they disobey God. Really disobey God! As soon as they do, their eyes are opened, and “they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” I’d kind of like to see these fig-leaf outfits, by the way. What did they sew them with? How did they stay on?

God, of course, finds out about their disobedience and scolds them (and us). The ground we walk on? Cursed. Child labor? Horrible. Work? Tough.

But after he scolds, we’re told in in Genesis 3:1 that the Lord “made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.”

Really? He made them garments? I mean, he could have easily let them continue traipsing around in their fig leaves. After all, they just terribly disobeyed him! He could have let them make their own garments out of skin. But he didn’t. He made them garments, and he clothed them. Don't get me wrong. God is not a softy. He banishes them from the garden, but he clothes them first in garments of skin.