journey onWord with us

The season we just celebrated has its roots in the good earth of where we begin our Daily Bible Reading in this new one. On the very first day of this new year, we consume the full story of our beginning with God. In writing a great score, a composer typically builds to a crescendo. Our Creator does just that in breathing the great story of creation into the ear and heart of Moses. God’s opening note was bright and bold, but His final act of creation was His highest. Of all the grandeur in the expanse of the heavens and the creative power in hanging a great light to divide day from night, man is creation’s crescendo. Light and darkness; day and night; sky, sea and land; sun, moon and stars; plants, fish, birds and animals were all for God’s glory and made expressly for Adam. They were all for Adam and Eve. They were all for us. Then, God rested.

In the second stanza of this great score, God leans in closer to tell of a garden — His gift of home. Trees sprung out of the ground. Rivers flowed and watered God’s garden. He placed man there to tend to it. He gave him one clear command and then gifted him a fitting helper. God had thought of everything and was lavish in His giving. But in what seems like no time at all, a test of that truth would birth a curse. Had God truly thought of everything? Had He actually given man all he needed? The serpent’s tempt suggested there was something God knew that man didn’t. There was something He’d held onto for only himself. It’s been presented as a shiny apple, but the serpent’s tempt was never about the fruit. The tempt was about truth and trust. What did God know, and why had He not told them? Original sin was not a rebellion as much as it was a rejection. A rejection of God’s knowing that it was best for us never to know. Eve, and then Adam, chose to believe the lie that God lied to them. They failed to trust Him and insisted on knowing for themselves. We can be quick to judge them both. But if you search your heart, can’t you see yourself making that very same choice? Have you not failed in that same way more times than you could count? And have we seen enough in our lifetime to see why God knew it was best for us never to know. (That’s a purposeful period at the end of a thought that sounds an awful lot like a question)

There is a first and last page to God’s great love story, but there is no beginning or end to His love for us. God made us, and then in what amounted to only a breath of time, we chose other than Him. That could have been history’s end, but it would be just the beginning of HIStory. The consequence of their sin was separation and exile, but there was great mercy in God clothing Adam and Eve and continuing in relationship. The cycles of exile and restoration, of punishment and promise, are ever-present in the story of God and His people. They color every page of the Testament we’ve chosen to read through this year. But there’s a Cure to the curse that birthed those cycles that’s also ever-present in those very same pages. I pray you’ll see Him even more clearly and truly than you’ll see them.

May we begin the new year with a fresh embrace of new morning mercies as we read the old, old story. We pray you’ll join us on this journey and find the Old becoming new again.