It seemed like a fairy tale that should begin, 'once upon a time' but it happened just as I remember it and with the genuine situation I experienced: Here I am forty years old and no place to go. What do I do now?

As I pondered my situation, I tried to console myself by thinking: I'm not the only one this ever happened to! It'll be OK. Besides, I just know there have been lots of folks, sometime during their lifetime, who have wondered why they were dealt the cards they had, why they had so many burdens to live with, or how their future was going to turn out, and the big one, what happens when I die?

During my short lifetime, for example, I shared the grief of a schoolmate's family who lost a son from a hunting accident. I've seen victims of tornados who lost everything they owned have to start over but without any of their precious memories. I've seen flood victims who saw their house fill with muddy brown water cry because they didn't have flood insurance, and victims of fire lose irreplaceable possessions to the ravages of an uncontrollable flame.

Suffering is a reality we hope will pass us by but seldom does. Suffering is when we fall to our knees and pray for the thousands of innocent victims who have died from wars, storms, fires, explosions, diseases and other evil deeds. Suffering, without cause, is beyond our comprehension but becomes a reality when experienced personally. It always seems to come when we least expect it. When an unexpected thing happened to someone else, I would always say, it could be worse. But this time, I was wondering, what will I do now?

When I had finally accepted the reality that I had no place to go, it just didn't seem possible. However, there I was, driving slowly to nowhere, at which point I decided I should probably give some thought as to where that would be. Up ahead was a North/South interstate with signs pointing the way to several distant cities; however, none of them offered any suggested destination that I thought could possibly provide any solutions to my problem, so I just kept following the sunset. Maybe sooner or later, I would receive a premonition as to where to go.

After several hours of monotonous driving, I noticed the heavens were beginning to show off their bright shining stars for the night. They seemed to be telling me I should probably pull over and try to get some sleep. I remember thinking, it's still warm now but soon fall would bring cold weather and would begin redecorating green leaves with red and golden ones. The grass and fields would be turning brown. Later, the snow would change everything to white. It would be getting cold and there would be no more leaves at all. What was I going to do then?

Finally, I found a suitable spot to stop. After shutting off the engine I listened to the radio for a while then tried to settle in for the night by making a headrest out of a stack of clothes I had piled up on the front seat. Before closing my eyes, I remember saying to myself, maybe I should just go home and start over. Why did the doctor tell me not to go now? He could have been more informative with his diagnosis or at least given me suggestions as to other possibilities. He didn't and I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

I started to dream of fun things; recalling memories of my childhood home in Ohio. There I was, a young five year old, walking home from a day on our neighbor's farm. Pudgy, my black and white cocker spaniel, and I often spent the day together doing fun things on Dean Grove's farm. Dean and his family were special people. When we moved to our ten acre place from the city, he and his wife helped us with anything we needed to make our little place "pioneer efficient" as they would say. They knew moving from the city to the country was not an easy task for us. All dad had thought about was how the fresh air in a natural environment would be healthier for all of us, especially for me, since I was recovering from rheumatic fever. The problem was, he had not given any thought to the change in lifestyle required. Dad, by trade was a cost accountant not a farmer, and Dean's help was appreciated. He made sure we had plenty of different vegetable seedlings for our garden; took dad to an auction to buy a bull, thinking maybe I'd enjoy the 4-H and learn the farmer's life. One day he helped dad buy a cow and the equipment needed to make fresh milk and butter. I guess he showed him how to milk her as well. Dean showed us to how to plant hay and offered to cut it when it came time.

Oink, our pig, came from one of Dean's sows and he also made sure we had hens for fresh eggs, and enough for a roast chicken dinner from time to time. The rooster he gave us, he told us was our country alarm clock. Dean was not only a good family friend but in the fall he was my school bus driver. In the winter, when the snow was just right, the wind was gentle, and the moon was the brightest, Dean would hitch up his two strawberry roans and take my mom, dad, grandma, me and Donnie, his son, on a sleigh ride. The strawberry roans he had were beautiful work horses who pulled the sleigh together with the pride of champions. As we came back to our starting point, the sound of their harness bells signaled Mrs. Groves to pour the hot chocolate and put the cookies on the table for us to enjoy.

As Pudgy and I got closer to home Tippy, my sorrel pony, was running beside her new colt, Sunday. They were so handsome, mother and colt, running together, their manes and tails waving in the air and kicking their legs as they circled the field. Next to the stable we could see Molly, our faithful Guernsey cow. She was headed home too from a day of grazing in the pasture. When "Oink", our huge pig, saw us coming he would start hollering for his supper by making loud squealing sounds.

When we arrived we decided to wait for mom and dad on the porch. I remember, we had this huge large swing which was almost as wide as the porch itself. The whole family enjoyed swinging on it; especially after the evening meal on the weekends. When the weather was nice in the summer, we often listened to radio stories as well as music on our old Emerson radio.

Pudgy and I made ourselves comfortable on the swing. Pudgy laid his chin on my leg and soon both of us were sleeping and dreaming. It seemed odd, thinking about it now, having a dream inside of a dream that I was already having. I was remembering my younger days, when I was in the hospital with rheumatic fever and how I had spent most of my first and second grade at home. I had been home schooled by my parents and aunt. Dad was an accountant, good at math, my aunt was a nurse and knew science, and mother was a great cook, good with arts and crafts as well as a great Bible story teacher. My focus then fast forwarded to a different time. I was a teenager recalling the fun I had in high school. I was replaying football games, baseball games, and even revisited the time our basketball team played in the Ohio Valley Basketball Tournament. That was some game. As I recall, one of our opponents had never lost a game during the regular season but here we were ahead of them at half time. We were the first team ever to do that; however, they remained undefeated and went on to win the championship.

Before I got to the years which involved my college days, something or someone seemed to be walking towards me from the direction of the horizon. A white glow surrounded the image. Just as it seemed to be getting closer it disappeared. I had no idea what it was, where I was when I saw it, or where it went. I didn't know what to do.

I looked around in disbelief but never did see it or anything like it again. I did recognize that I was now sitting under an oak tree. It was a clear and sunny morning. I was smiling and marveling at the beauty that was all around me. There were beautiful multi-colored wild- flowers complementing the landscape and decorating the skies. Small white fluffy clouds with silver winged birds flying in and out of view were singing songs in their unique bird whistling way. Looking towards the horizon, I saw a sparkling brook. The sun highlighted a reflection of dancing ripples off the water. Baby rabbits with their momma jumped up and down, disappearing from time to time as they ran through tall grass surrounding the brook. A mother duck with a trail of little ducklings following behind were quacking duck songs while swimming in the clear blue waters. Their little bodies seemed to be swirling in rhythm to the sound of a nearby water falls from the stream above. I remember feeling at peace with the earth and how much I appreciated the beauty, how clean and innocent everything seemed to be, and how marvelous the colors were that dominated the atmosphere. The flowers had such a sweet aroma and the trees seemed to be guarding the rolling countryside, protecting everything like soldiers guarding a unique treasure. I didn't know what to do.

How did it all get here? How and why does such beauty become abused? It seemed unreasonable for it to just disappear. Why do the innocent have to suffer? These questions were whirling around in my head while at the same time I was trying to make sense of why I was enjoying all the wonders of what I was seeing and experiencing such peace but had no idea where I was. I began recalling Sunday school stories about the beginning of the earth and how the animals seemed to be sharing their love for each other without fear as they played. Did I die?

While sitting in wonder, I saw, coming towards me over the horizon, what appeared to be an image of my mom. I wondered how she had gotten here and what she was doing walking in these gardens. Approaching me I heard her say,

"Are you reading your Bible stories?" and with that she disappeared.

The glow reappeared but this time I could see an older man wearing a white robe appearing to be some sort of sheep or goat herder perhaps. He asked me, "Are you a Genesis writer?"

"I don't think so, "I said.

He went on to say, "The Genesis writer "showed us how man became part of the universe.

"Are you a writer?" he asked me.

I didn't reply because I didn't know what I was or what to do. I gathered my thoughts and remembered mom's bible stories about the creation and the role of Adam and Eve in our life.

Finally, I asked him,

"Do you think God wanted the Genesis writer to foreshadow man's need for a philosophy called Religion?"

"Perhaps" he said. "The Genesis writer did show us how man became part of the universe which eventually would include what man called a religion."

I asked him, "What role did Adam and Eve have in that process?"

He said, "If a man does not know sin, how would God's plan for salvation and penitence be accomplished and man needs God to do it?"

When he stepped closer, the glow got brighter but his appearance seemed to be hazier. I couldn't make out his face.

"God seems to be making a case for giving us knowledge and he certainly is suggesting that there is a real responsibility that comes with its possession," he explained.
I could see the man with the white robe very clear now, as he continued, but I still could not make out what he looked like.

"For eternity, knowledge has been used by mankind to make decisions which would not only affect him but also the societies in which he would live. Because of Adam and Eve, God's creation now has the ability to choose good or evil but they must be prepared for the results of that decision. In other words...."

"In other words," I interrupted, "Man can now factor in his expected gain or loss while making decisions but he also knows that "Sin" or "Evil" is an option, not an automatic choice. Is that what you mean?"

"Yes" he agreed.

"Are there other valuable lessons foreshadowed in Genesis?" I asked him.

"I think you must learn," he said, "that with 'free will' the advantages of making choices can produce results which are unexpected; therefore, man should not hold God responsible for any result not anticipated and never take "His" name in vain when things go wrong."

"What else should I know?" I asked him.

"Remember, the author of Genesis used, for example, the serpent to foreshadow the omnipotence of evil sin in man's future when he let man choose contempt and disrespect for God's wishes by eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Adam and Eve still loved God, so their act was a moral sin instead of an evil sin, which is the absence of God's love. Evil sin; therefore, may be classified as a spiritual disease which seeks out everyone. Our only defense against its powerful influences comes only from God's love. Through His gift of love, His divine grace, we are taught the lesson of his redemptive powers but it took Jesus to teach us about reconciliation. You could say the answer to salvation and penitence is Jesus."

"Would you think it's fair to say," I asked, "that the creation of life and the life and plight of Adam and Eve, as presented in Genesis, became the way the author of Genesis chose to explain how man went astray and caused life to become the challenge it was for the citizens of his time?"

He told me, "What better way do you think the author could have pictured heaven than being like a wonderful garden where one could walk and talk with God. Adam and Eve chose to follow their own emotions and killed us all."

Continuing, he said, "It took the Devil, in the form of a snake, to represent temptation, shame, greed, and lust. He tempted man by using the benefits that could come from a beautiful innocent tree that bore perfect fruit. The tree of knowledge taught all of mankind that knowledge has its price. Evil Sin was represented by eating the apple and moral sin was represented by Adam and Eve's decision to break God's spiritual order. Adam and Eve compromised man's dignity and ethics due to their lack of trust and faith in the word of God thus making man's future character and integrity dependent on the choices they would make."
As the glow of the light surrounding the man talking to me, started to fade, I thought, how ironic it was that it took a sin to give man a knowledge of good and evil. This process of learning was necessary in order for man to make choices, whether they were right or wrong caused the growth and development of his "Code of Conduct."

I felt myself shaking from side to side, then a loud tapping. I was startled and I woke up. Rubbing my eyes I heard a voice --

"You'll have to step out of the car sir!"

It was a State Trooper. After he was convinced I wasn't drunk and that my credentials were in order, he bid me farewell. His parting suggestion was that I should not park my car on the side of the highway to sleep. I Thanked him and drove off to somewhere.

What a strange dream I thought. Why the Adam and Eve story? How should I interpret its meaning? Maybe I was being reminded; especially by my mother, to do the right thing rather than seeing it as having a cause and effect moral. On the other hand, it seemed that I was being reminded that when the spiritual order between man and God is broken a moral concern is developed. It seemed to me that the question I had to wrestle with was; am I going to make a choice between good and evil or a decision to say yes to Christ regardless of the outcome? I knew he would not let me work this out alone because the saving work of Christ's love refuses to let us fight evil with evil. I knew that evil was a privation which needed special conditions to be present in order to produce its effect and I certainly didn't want to contribute to that possibility. Let's think about this some more!

I do believe the purpose of the Adam and Eve story was to impress upon the people of the time, as well as future generations the reasons for suffering and how sin causes a separation from God. I believe God used symbolism, in the form of characters and props, to make his point. Adam represented all men, while the talking snake, playing the part of the villain, (the Devil) represented evil, and the Tree of Knowledge represented everything man wants. The lesson however was learning what happens when the spiritual order between man and God is broken. I know that most scholars hold that the creation story, Adam and Eve, and Noah's Ark were written as myth. The subjects are so astonishing, that they are hard to comprehend. The thing is, we are here in this wonderful wide world, experiencing the reality of its mysteries and wonders but we don't understand its origin which exists in all its magnificence.

Deep in thought I needed to pull over to discern everything that had happened to me. I saw up ahead a sign that said, "Overlook, 1000 yds. A great place for pictures." Why not pull over here and figure this out while enjoying the natural beauty that God created?

Ok, let's see. When asked why Adam ate from the tree: His immediate reaction was to blame Eve. He said, "The woman whom you put here with me, she gave me fruit from the tree so I ate it."

Then Eve blamed the serpent when she was asked, by replying, the serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it." Does this pattern sound familiar? The snake had tricked her into being greedy, "you do want to be as smart as him, right?" he had asked her.

Lesson One: Our problems are someone else's fault! Everyone is so quick to blame someone else for their actions. As a matter of fact, most arguments consist of accusation: who did what to whom and why? Most of us try to build a defense of innocence but the results are usually no better than the serpent's. He was banned from all animals and from the wild creatures; and made to crawl on his belly and eat dirt.

The women didn't fair too well either; to the women God said, "I will intensify the pangs of your childbearing, in pain shall you bring forth children." And finally to the man he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life? (Gen. 3:17) His punishment continues at (3:19) when God says, "By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat. Until you return to the ground from which you were taken, for thou are dirt, and to dirt you shall return."

Lesson Two: The Mystery of Suffering was born; why do people suffer: The Lord God banished Adam form the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he had been taken. When he expelled the man, he settled him east of the Garden of Eden, thus, the mystery of suffering was born.

What can I conclude from this? Did I learn that I should change? How to change. What did I do wrong? I wondered? Was I blaming someone else for my problems? What evil did I do! Greed? Are we not supposed to want things, have a better life? If our purpose is to do good works and glorify the name of God, then it seems to me that evil wouldn't exist if we lived in an environment where our love for God was so strong that temptation could not overcome us. If we are allowed to choose unfaithfulness and disrespect for God's wishes however, then evil will exist because we have removed ourselves, at least temporarily, from His love.

Lesson Three: (First Commandment Love God over all things) It works the same with everything in life. If we choose to ignore what we know is the right thing to do we have no order! There needs to be order in the universe. A God loving spiritual order, one in which people must follow in order to prosper but if disobeyed, they must know that suffering and eventual death will result. The tree of life and knowledge would therefore be the author's prop, a symbol representing God's word and the eating of the apple would represent sin; which is the breaking of God's order.

It was becoming evident to me that in order for us to know that faith requires a strong commitment to be loyal to what one believes to be morally correct, we need to know what the alternative to faith would bring in order to understand the effect of evil. If sin is the lack of God's love, then sin is evil. But if our love for God is always going to be challenged and tested by making us make choices that could cause us to disrespect His wish in favor of satisfying our curiosity or desires, then evil is a moral and ethical problem. The action does not preclude that we do not love God. It simply means we have become a victim of sin. How was I going to use this experience to change?

This journey was changing my life and as I drove I though of what I had to do to become a better person: I had to:

....Discover a new respect for love,
....Use my education and faith to procure spiritual help to avoid the ravages that crime
homelessness would bring.
.....Work hard to change my attitude and recognize what love means
.....Recognize that God brought my way a church that was devoted to teaching the truth
and believed, that with God's, help I had the talent to be successful in a new
adventure which He and I created.
.....Understand that things happen to us which are not pleasant.

I thought as I drove off, my problem was I had been trying to pursue things that I'd never have and without God's help never would.

The Lord is faithful to his promises. The snake's persistence that Eve eat from the tree of Knowledge, to me foreshadowed the preoccupation we have to be someone else, a lust to be famous, rich, or more elite than others. We all have idols which represent milestones that we will never reach but want. We all see some things in our life that we would like to have, that secret wish or obvious craving to be like someone whom we could never be or have that something which realistically we know we will never possess. The snake's insistence that Eve disobey the Lord's instructions so that she could be as intelligent, famous, and worldly as the Creator seems to be a prophecy of the need for the second commandment, "Thou Shall not make unto thee a graven image."

I had learned that materialistic things should not be held in a higher esteem than God. If one thinks about the New Testament and how much more it is than the Gospels and other writings, one could conclude that it was the "Promise" that when man makes the decision to freely commit his life to God, he will possess the ultimate faith that will allow him to experience the powerful love of God.

I realized, as I saw the street lights of the little town I just passed through, dimming to welcome another day, what the answer was going to be for me. The ultimate significance of my choices was going to either improve or destroy the future worthiness of me and my relationship with God. I remembered asking the light in my dream if it would be fair to say that the plight of Adam and Eve, as presented in Genesis by their experiences, became the way the author chose to explain how man went astray and caused life to become the challenge it was for the citizens of his day?

I thought about a lot of things during the next several days as I was driving home. I remembered the day I saw real beauty, green pastures with wild flowers in them, blue tossing seas, and feeling the spirit of God shining through the colorful stain glass window of the chapel on Elm Street. I thought as long as man has the ability to think there will be change. Not as to an end to itself but like the light that brings a new reality to what had been in the dark.

I remembered the beauty of each season and the purpose each had been given when they were created. We will always have a summer, fall, winter, and spring but are they always the same? Some are gentle and some are violent. Kind of like, good and evil. Some summers can be too hot causing droughts and dried up creek beds. Fall can bring an early winter with piles of snow and sometimes layers of ice while spring can host floods from the melting northern snows. When things are normal, in most areas of the country, summers are the most productive time for harvesting new growth. The fall foreshadows what beauty will be like when the trees start to wear their new colors and they remind us that the white snows will be along pretty soon. Spring brings new life and paints the landscape with multi colors. Wildflowers start to bloom and scurrying young wildlife curiously explore their new surroundings.

Man also changes like the weather, always challenging his mind to find answers before he even knows the question. Who is to say what or who is right or wrong? The final judgement belongs only to God! I think true knowledge is derived from faith because in the end who makes the laws? Since the beginning of man, religions have molded the world into what it is today and I think it will be the religion of today that will be practiced tomorrow that will keep man in God's favor. God's grace will allow all men to continue to learn how to handle that which has been recorded in the Old and New Testaments.

Our founding fathers certainly knew that the common thread weaving its way through the fabric of our history that gave morality its significance was religious freedom. All of History has recognized religious freedom as being the basic foundation that makes a society moral and when we add political and educational freedom to our list we have combined the magic ingredients that can best establish a peaceful and compassionate behavior to our society. It is and always has been these three freedoms that help us focus on knowing right from wrong and how to promote those decisions that benefit the common good. Although I share the view of those philosophers and historians who hold that the universal characteristics of morality and politics, bonded by the values which each holds do change with time form society to society, it seems obvious to me that the most consistent characteristic motivating us towards an acceptable morality is indeed our freedom of religion, education, and politics.

In the end, if Good and Evil was a result of Eve's choices and how in man's future knowledge is used, then history became a bi-product of their choices. Because of these choices, history measures the worthiness of man's decisions and what he has done with the power to act. The sin of evil became the sin of disobedience to God and death was the result; did man make a bad decision?

The sign said, "WELCOME TO MY HOME TOWN."