When God arrayed the heavens with the starry galaxies,
Encircling Earth with ocean waves and atmospheric breeze;
When He had summoned flowering plants and every fruitful vine,
Creating dragonflies and birds, and fish to swim the brine,
Repeatedly He stated that His craftsmanship was “good.”
His wisdom, might, and glory by these works are understood.
He called forth living animals to roam the fresh, new land,
But when it came to us, into the soil He plunged His hand
And breathed upon His likeness fashioned from a lump of clay,
To house in naked flesh His holy image for display.
Upon this crowning glory, placed within a gardened wood,
God made His valuation with these two words: “very good.”
Although the human bodies formed by God were fully bare,
There was no shame or shyness in that male and female pair,
Until they listened to the Snake who hated God’s design
And wanted shameless nakedness to end and cease to shine.
They ate the fruit of knowledge independent from their Lord.
Embarrassment at nudity became sin’s false reward.
They hid from one another’s eyes, in leafy textiles dressed,
Forgetting how their nakedness was previously blessed.
Their clothing was their own idea. They thought their bodies lewd,
Confusing sinful guilt and shame with merely being nude.
And when God sought to find them in their former naked skin,
He questioned why they fled and who had led them into sin.
The penalty of death their disobedience made due
Was paid that day by sacrifice of animals they knew
Whose innocence was obvious, whose furs God used as wrap
To clothe them with what paid for falling into Satan’s trap—
To cover or atone, and to protect, as they were banned
From Eden’s bliss into a harshness God had never planned.
- Poems Between Birth and Resurrection ©2013 by David L. Hatton

Those sacrificial skins did not condemn our nudity.
God’s beauty in our bodies is still wonderful to see.
In every part His image gleams, from naked head to toe,
All lust comes from a sinful heart, not from that glory’s glow.
But Satan fuels that lust with lies through body-shame and fear
To hide what’s “very good” beneath ongoing fig-leaf gear.
The priests and pulpits, schools and courts, all seem attuned to heed
That ancient demon’s subtle trick, to make his scheme their creed,
But while the loudest voices of society demean
God’s unclothed image as indecent, sinful, lewd, obscene . . .
God has His will and makes us thrill and fills the world with mirth
To watch new humans enter here stark naked in their birth.
— David L. Hatton, 12/29/2004, from Poems Between Birth and Resurrection ©2013 by David L. Hatton