We laughed in our small group about Eve’s reaction to the walking, talking serpent, wondered how long she listened and discussed the whole idea before she acted on it, trying to peel back the pastel Sunday School picture from the flesh-and-blood reality of our ancestor.  That is always what we want to get down to in these stories, the real people with bodies and minds and hearts like ours, who made choices and lived out their lives in the presence of God. If we can get inside their skins and understand why they chose as they did, for good and ill, we can learn from them.. And if we can see God’s plan of reconciliation working out in the lives of all those messy broken people, we can have faith that He will not give up on us, that our lives have purpose as well. That is why He wrote down their stories, to show us where we came from and the way back to Him.

But the bare bones of the matter are sobering. Eve had to choose who to trust: the awesome glorious God who created her and provided her with everything good, or the fascinating creature who spoke so distractingly about the possibilities she could reach out and take for herself. And someone said it right out last night, that we are faced with the same choice every day. Who will we trust, the all-powerful One who made it all or the desirable stuff of creation all around us that we can grab hold of?

In words like that it seems obvious, but somehow when the choices need to be made it is rarely so clear. Eve was completely deceived– and not quickly or casually, but by a master of cunning, an Enemy undercover in God’s beautiful garden where everything was very good. She had no way of even comprehending the millennia of bondage and brokenness that would spin out from that one choice she made. We should know better ourselves.

We who have been re-created by the Savior and set free to choose every day know firsthand the ugliness of sin, the shame and separation it causes. We who have met the Savior also know firsthand the wonder of being forgiven, the power of the Creator over all things, and His amazingly lavish grace. So Paul reminds us “Let no one deceive you with empty words….Walk as children of light and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:6,8) 

Becoming a woman of purpose means first of all accepting my responsibility for my own choices in the everyday. We joked about saying what we would have done different in Eve’s place– hindsight can be so very wise– but it is a challenge we need to take up each day, because we stand right here and make choices in the moment to trust the Creator or the Deceiver. To be content and comfortable in God’s provision for us or to reach out and grab the distracting stuff of creation that is so appealing to our eyes. To believe that the One who made us knows all our days and can work out His purposes in them or to doubt and fret.

Because we know where we have come from and the great cost that bought our reconciliation to God, let us make good choices this day.

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air…and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ– by grace you have been saved…” (Ephesians 2:1-2, 4)

“It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.” (Ephesians 1:9 The Message)