The garden, and the first choice

God plants a garden and puts the man in it with work to do, a wife to share it with, and one single limit: do not eat from that one tree. The limit is not cruelty; it is the shape of trust. Then a voice suggests that God is holding something back, that the limit is really a theft. They eat. Nothing improves. What they gain is the knowledge that they are exposed, and their first instinct is to hide — from each other with leaves, from God among the trees. God's first word after the fall is not a sentence but a question: "Where are you?" He is looking for them. There are consequences, and they are heavy: pain, toil, a closed gate. But before the gate closes God makes them clothes with his own hands. Judgement and mercy arrive together, and they have travelled together ever since.