Freedom and Ribs (Yes, I know it's a little early for the fourth of July ;))

"The LORD God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die." Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper as his complement." So the LORD God formed out of the ground every wild animal and every bird of the sky, and brought each to the man to see what he would call it. And whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the sky, and to every wild animal; but for the man no helper was found as his complement. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to come over the man, and he slept. God took one of his ribs and closed the flesh at that place. Then the LORD God made the rib He had taken from the man into a woman and brought her to the man. And the man said: This one, at last, is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called "woman," for she was taken from man.  This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh. Both the man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame." [Gen 2:15-25 HCSB]

Observations:

• What choices were made? 
• God chose to give man an abundance of freedom along with a command and a severe consequence if that command was broken. 
• God chose to take something from inside of the man.
• God transformed what he took into a beautiful new creation.  
• What choices could have been made? 
• God could have chosen not to give man quite so much freedom. 
• God could have chosen not to give man the one command. 
• God could have chosen to give the man more than one command. 
• God could have chosen to pair the command with a less severe consequence.
• God could have chosen to just create the woman first (what's up with the animal thing?)
• Adam could have refused to name the animals he didn't like (I'm just saying, maybe if it was me, I wouldn't have thought cockroaches didn't even deserved a name). 
• The man could have gotten mad at God for taking his rib. 
• God could have created woman out of the man's hair or something else that might have been a little less invasive. 
• The man could have been indifferent towards or ungrateful for his partner. 
• The man could have compared his new partner to God and found her lacking.  

Applications:

• What really hit me as I was typing out these observations was the fact that God had a choice about the material he chose to make woman out of, but He chose to take the man's rib. He chose to take something he had given to the man (any women out there grateful that he didn't use dirt again? I mean, if we twist this headline the right way, "Man Made from Dirt, Woman Made from Ivory"... ;)). At this point in time, the man's body was probably one of the most valuable things to the man-- and God took back part of the man's body. This struck me, because today, God still chooses to take things from us (or allow things to be taken from us).  And without that perfect trust that allowed Adam to sleep (rest) throughout this whole process, we whine and we cry and we ask "Why, God? WHY?!!!!!" And we get angry. We get really angry. And then, by the time God brings us the beautiful thing He was creating in the midst of the taking, we don't appreciate it. We shun it. We have closed our hearts to it. And that's where the true loss sets in. 
• Also, as a faithful Danny Silk fan, I can not help but mention....there are also SO MANY APPLICATIONS here about handling authority. this is seriously my go-to passage when it comes to creating an ideal classroom (and/or home) environment. God, the greatest teacher and parent in all of history, when it came to creating a safe environment for His child, gave his child SO MUCH FREEDOM!. But, that freedom didn't come without a command or without a severe consequence if the command was broken. Sometimes I wish as a teacher I could create a "History Garden of Eden" for my students, and then just give them the freedom to explore the History Garden to their little heart's content, and I could just be there to explore and guide along side them.  

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Other Observations or Applications?