About those trees...

My sweet grandmother Dorthea, as many of her spiritually minded peers, always loved the hymn "In the Garden". If you're a fan of country music or a baptist, you may be familiar with this hymn too:
"I come to the garden, alone
while the dew is still on the roses
and the voice I hear
falling on my ear
the Son of God discloses
and He walks with me
and He talks with me
and He tells me...
I am His own.
And the joy we share
as I tarry there
none other
has ever
known."

     I never loved it except to hear my Nanny sing it, with joy and confidence and more than a little off key.
I think of Adam when I hear this hymn, walking in the garden with God.
I think of Adam coming upon these two trees. Both good for food, beautiful to look at, and placed intentionally in Adam's world by God.
Two trees- one with an invitation and one with a prohibition.
And of course, on behalf of Adam and Eve and the entire human race I ask, "Why God? Why did you put that tree there?"
How could a temptation to make a wrong choice be a good thing?
     The Hebrew for "good" can mean: to serve a purpose...to perform a function well...to be fitting for the ultimate goal. What was that goal? It was to be a reflection of God's being and character and a partner in managing the created world (Gen. 1:26). But Adam was finite, limited. Adam was only human and so, it would take him forever to come into a full life experience of His purpose. It would take Him a forever of walking and talking with God to partner with Him in his position as "Image bearer of God"... "Assistant manager of the world". Since Adam would need forever, God planted the tree of life. A tree that would sustain Adam...would tend to the workings of his body with every sumptuous bite.
The other tree...the one we consider the source of the curse, would tend to the workings of his soul with every closed lip refusal to bite.
The option to trust and obey was an invitation to live and to love.
But Adam was new to life. He was new to God. He knew nothing of death. He knew nothing of evil.
God did.
God knew Satan.
God already knew loss and separation. God had already been betrayed by one of His own, Lucifer.
God knew the misery of being intimately acquainted with evil.
This knowledge, this personal experience of evil was something from which He wanted to protect Adam. But true intimacy must come from a choice to know and be known. It must come from a decision to trust. So God said "no" to the tree of knowing good and evil.
He didn't appear to give much of an explanation.
How many of us who have been parents understand that a two year-old wouldn't understand a long explanation of our "no". We also cannot place our two year-old in a position where we never have to say "no". How would they learn to trust us? How would they learn anything at all without choices? How would they learn to love?
God didn't begin his relationship with Adam with a bunch of rules...just one.
One "no" in their own little world of "yes"...
Just one opportunity to trust,
one opportunity to choose,
and an invitation to live...
to love
and to be loved.