Manley came out first and Sheila trailed meekly behind him. They couldn’t bear to look into the Father’s sad, knowing eyes. He took note of their garments of leaves, wilting now and so shabby, then back at their faces.
Manley stammered some sort of explanation for their odd apparel. It sounded feeble even to his own ears.
“How did you know you were naked? Did you eat of the tree I asked you not to eat from?”
If they hadn’t been feeling so guilty they might have heard the gentleness, the sorrow in his voice, but all they heard, or thought they perceived was a terrible sternness.
After a lot of self justification and passing the blame to each other and Lucifer, who was trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, the Father told them they would have to leave the garden. Forever. Manley and Sheila thought their hearts would break as they gazed at the beautiful estate, radiant in the dying light of the sun.
As they slinked past the staff member who had already been appointed as a guard at the Shining Gate, they saw a stern, impassive look on his face.
“And I thought he was our friend!” Sheila wept, but Manley didn’t answer. He was too filled with his own gloomy thoughts.
Casting me out of the garden just because I took one little bite of that forbidden fruit! What was so wrong about that anyway? A seed of rebellion, something which he had never known existed, had sprouted in his heart. Thorns and briars…the sweat of my brow! That is a pitiless and harsh punishment. I didn’t know my loving Father was capable of such cruelty! And so they stumbled along each wrapped up in their own depressing thoughts.
Sheila kept looking back. Oh, if only I would have smuggled out some seeds from that tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I have such an insatiable desire to seek out and learn more of the mysteries of life.
The Father gazed longingly after them, his eyes pooling with tears. Oh if only they would listen to me! Oh if they would only be truly sorry and repent. I will miss those quiet hours of fellowship possibly far more than they ever would. Sometimes they will call upon me, but far too often it will be only when they are in trouble. Oh, if only I could make them understand it was not a punishment that the earth would bring forth thorns and briars, but a prophesy. The world will deteriorate because sin has entered it. Oh, Manley, Manley, oh Sheila, you weren’t cast out as a punishment but as a protection. You have been eating from the tree of Life for so long already, that you will live for hundreds of years. If I would have allowed you to stay in the garden, you would have lived forever there with your sin and guilt. Not only that, but the oftener you plucked off fruit from the forbidden tree, (for you would have become addicted to it,) the more your knowledge would spoil and eventually destroy the beautiful estates I had created for your pleasure.
But they were not inclined to listen as they wandered farther and farther away.
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