Exiled and alone, they sit in silence watching others while they search.  Some have accepted without question the role they must play.  Deceived by the thought that the role and the man are one and the same, they comfort themselves with the philosophy, "That's the way life is."

This book is written to you.  Not the "you" everyone knows, but the "little man inside" that for years you have supposed no one knew or ever would.  God knows that man, understands him and loves him.  At this point, I am not so interested in telling you what kind of person you are, as I am in helping you to discover why you are what you are.  The effects I speak about must have a cause, and the greatest book known to man on the subject of human behavior records it.  That book is the Bible, God's precious Word.  We know it is His Word because it tells the truth about us, and knows us as we are.

In the Bible, the first book, Genesis, is the book of beginnings.  In it the origin of all things is found, and the peculiarities of the human personality are explained.  You, as a person, are not merely the product of fate, nor the natural result of environment and training, but of nature.  In Adam, your father, you will find the reason back of much of your behavior.  Each of us, his children, are really living in our own way his experiences in the Garden of Eden.

When God created Adam, He placed him in perfect surroundings -- a beautiful garden, abundant food supply, pleasant circumstances and unlimited possibilities of life.

The whole earth was subject to him, and every living thing awaited his command. Blessed by God with a helpmeet (exact counterpart) named Eve to share his life, he enjoyed unbroken communion with her and with God.  As he walked and talked with the Creator in the cool of the day, it was, indeed, paradise.  Adam was himself with Eve and with God.  Naked and not ashamed, he walked in quiet self-acceptance, resting in the undisputed fact that he was what he was by the grace of God.  Resting in the wisdom and love of God, he saw himself as the expression of God's creation, hence known, understood and loved by both God and Eve.

All of this changed when Satan, through the serpent, cast the shadow of doubt upon the integrity of God; changed His truth into a lie; and accused Him of withholding good from Adam and Eve, hence causing them to doubt His love.  The unbelief of their hearts was expressed in their act of disobedience, and so sin entered the human family; and spiritual death was the direct result.  Death means separation - separation from God, and from each other - and the evidences of this death are plain to see in the events that followed.

The openness Adam and Eve had once enjoyed between themselves was gone.  Their eyes were opened and they saw themselves as they were - naked - and they were ashamed of that nakedness.  Self-acceptance turned into mutual rejection, and they busied themselves sewing fig leaves

All of this is fine, but sooner or later we make the discovery that we have taken into our hiding place a companion that none of us can live with forever.  That companion is loneliness.

Loneliness was one of the effects of Adam's fall.  He was alone in the beginning and God said it was not good for him to be alone, so He gave him as a precious gift, an helpmeet, Eve.  Adam never knew loneliness in his perfect estate, but he and his children have lived with this destroyer ever since his fall.  Adam knew loneliness the day he hid from Eve; for, doubting his acceptance as he was, he revealed only that part of himself he judged her willing to receive.  Haunted by the realization that the image he projected was not true to the real man, the little man inside learned to live alone and lonely.

Another once wrote, "The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence."  Loneliness creates an unbearable stalemate in most of us.  Desperate to be known, accepted, understood and loved, we peer through the iron bars of our hiding places, daring at times to risk an exposure of our real selves, only to be greeted with hostility and rejection; and so we are driven deeper into ourselves.

We are like a timid flower who longs to unfold its beauty to the world, but is beset by frost and insects, develops a blight, clasps its petals firmly