Good Morning Brown Clee!

This week we have been thinking about the importance of taking responsibility for our words and actions – and ensuring that we own up about our mistakes. So today I’d like to continue with this theme and share a story from the Bible – one of the first stories, from Genesis 2.15—3.14, about when the first people disobeyed God – do you know who the first people were? They were Adam and Eve – in Hebrew (the language the story was written in) the names Adam and Eve mean ‘the first people ever’.

In the story God made a special garden for Adam and Eve to live in, and we know from the Bible that it was set in modern day Iran, next to Iraq in the Middle East.

Explain that Adam and Eve had been told that they could eat anything they wanted, except the tree that grew in the middle of the garden, which was called ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil’. What do the children think that name means?

In the story, Adam and Eve both disobey God – they make the wrong choice and listen to the snake’s lies. How did they feel after they had eaten the fruit? ….Why do you think they felt so bad?

We have all done things we shouldn’t have – think of a time when you did something wrong and how you felt. Did you own up and apologise? What happened?

In the story God sent Adam and Eve away, out of the lovely garden, and they learned to be farmers, to grow their own food, and to work on the land.

But what might have happened if they’d been honest and owned up (’fessed up!); if they’d taken responsibility for their actions instead of blaming someone else? We don’t know. Perhaps we’d still all live in that garden, not having to work …

But this story is still told as an example of how, when we aren’t honest, it affects many more people than just us. We don’t know what might have happened in the story if Adam and Eve had been honest. But we can be honest about ourselves, and then we know that whatever we’ve done, it’s easier to make it right again if we take the blame, apologise and acknowledge our part.