As I have studied the account of Adam’s baptism in the Pearl of Great Price, I have wondered about Eve’s baptism. This poem is my imagination of that great event.
The Baptism of Eve
Moses 6:64–68 (Pearl of Great Price):
And it came to pass, when the Lord had spoken with Adam, our father, that Adam cried unto the Lord, and he was caught away by the Spirit of the Lord, and was carried down into the water, and was laid under the water, and was brought forth out of the water. And thus he was baptized, and the Spirit of God descended upon him, and thus he was born of the Spirit, and became quickened in the inner man. And he heard a voice out of heaven saying: Thou art baptized with fire, and with the Holy Ghost. … And thou art after the order of him who was without beginning of days or end of years, from all eternity to all eternity.
She saw that Adam came back from his prayers
a different man.
“The promised day has come,”
he said.
“Your clothes are wet,” Eve answered him,
and brushed a dripping curl that wandered free
from Adam’s glistening brow. He drew her near.
“Come to the clearest pool—”
“Yes, I will come.”
“—the one reflecting heaven. I, by right,
can do for you the service I received
from Holy Spirit’s love.”
“This glorious day
shall see us both renewed, as Father taught,”
the woman said, and took her husband’s hand.
They walked the distance to the waterside—
the pool at the headwaters of the spring.
Eve waded in, head high, as queen to throne,
the grateful heiress of the royal grace.
And Adam stood beside her, said her name,
and laid her into water’s cool embrace,
and called her into depths she had not known.
“This is a type of death,” she thought, and heard
her memory repeat that if she ate
the fruit of knowledge, she would surely die.
“And I have surely died to live in Christ,
as I will surely die, but first will live
to teach my children of His sacrifice,
and mine, and Adam’s. Father, I thank Thee.”
As though no time had passed, she rose again,
Streaming joy to morning new in life.
Beside the pool he laid hands on her head
and gave the Holy Spirit as a gift.
From then they took their water from the place
where that pool fell out clean over the rocks,
and named the falls a holy source of life.
There Adam built an altar and they prayed.
The two remembered always that their hopes
were answered with the kindness of the Lord,
in making a way back to heaven’s shores.
—Lisa Bolin Hawkins
Sisterly Kindness 