You will eat the fruit of your labor; blessings and prosperity will be yours. – Psalm 128:2

Today's Scripture Reading (December 12, 2025): Psalm 127 & 128

In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the middle of a vast Garden. I have admitted that my image of that first Garden as a kid was just a bigger version of the vegetable/flower garden my grandfather had at the time. But that was just a child's understanding. It is more likely that the Garden was more of a wild space, filled with fruit trees and wild vegetables. As a result, Adam and Eve would have been gatherers; there was no need for them to plant, they just moved around the Garden and took what they needed to eat.

Of course, there was one tree from which eating was forbidden. It doesn't seem like much of a limitation considering that everything else in the Garden was clearly edible. We now face more limitations in nature. Sometimes it seems that the majority of what grows wild in the neighborhood is poisonous, and therefore forbidden for us to consume. But maybe that was what made this one tree so attractive; with everything else that was edible in the Garden, why wouldn't this one tree be edible as well?

For a while, Adam and Eve were successful at avoiding the fruit of the poisonous tree. But eventually, with the help of a serpent, they succumbed to the temptation; they ate from the tree.

Adam and Eve didn't get sick, at least, not immediately, but they were poisoned. They had experienced what it meant to go against God's dictates; now they knew, from experience, the meaning of evil. And that experience was going to cost them something, and cost all who came after them. God gave a portion of the penalty to Adam.

Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
    and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return (Genesis 3:17-19).

Psalm 128 promises a partial reprieve from the sentence Adam received when he was banished from the Garden of Eden. We will work, but our work won't be in vain; our work won't only produce weeds and thorns. Our labor will support us; we will be able to live off the fruit of our work. It isn't the original Garden in which we were placed at the beginning, but it is as close as we can get after Adam and Eve's failure in that Garden. And it is what God has intended for us, that when we rely on him and give him the labor of our lives, the blessings and prosperity of the Garden of Eden can still be ours.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Proverbs 1