"In The Beginning"

When I break simplicity down to the core, a picture churns over and over in my mind ... Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  On the sixth day God created man and woman to oversee the land and the animals.  He then looked over all that he created and it was "excellent in every way."

Now, I know everyone may not be there with me in my beliefs, but substituting Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal man into the story can have the same effect for the case that I am going to make today.  

In the first chapter of Genesis, the author talks about a lot of things that God made.  Light, sky, sea, animals, plants, heavens, earth, people ... But I didn't see one mention of a Wal-Mart.  Not a thought of a Grocery Store.  And I bet the Garden of Eden didn't even have a Starbucks (at least not a drive-thru Starbucks).  No, early man had to live off of the land.  What they could hunt and gather gave them what they would need to make it through the year.  

There is a lesson in there somewhere.  I have grown up to "love" our modern conveniences, but I have a feeling (that pesky feeling again) that I "love" them because I don't know a difference. A couple of examples that have stood out to me lately that I believe are driving that feeling...  

• A realization that we are much happier in the woods than we are in Target.
• A story of someone who came back from a missions trip to a third world area with the realization that a village, he thought would be sad and depressed because of the things they don't have, were happy and content seemingly because they were not aware that they were missing anything.  They were thankful for what they did have and did not have a nature of coveting what they didn't have 
• Another story of a man who took his family on vacation to a secluded, working farm.  They tended to the land and animals during the day and returned to their rustic cottage (void of electricity) by night to eat and laugh and play games that they hadn't played in years.

As I wrote in my last post, I "love" technology.  I am not advocating returning to the days of Adam and Eve. As I said, I think there is a lesson in all of this.  Man and Woman have been around for a really, really, really long time.  The airplane and car are just over one hundred years old.  The internet, personal computers and cell phones have only been available/affordable to the public for the last 25 years or so.  

What I am getting at is that the things, processes and experiences that we "can't live without", were lived without for an extremely long period of time.  So ... “In The Beginning" ... We weren't given much, but it was enough, and it was excellent in every way.