Genesis 3

Genesis...this book of beginnings and attempts to respond (not necessarily answer once and for all, but contribute to the on-going conversations that matter) to the big questions of life: if we were created good and set in a beautiful garden (albeit one that had loneliness of Adam and anxiety of Eve talking to the serpent), why is life so hard?  Enter in a dialogue with snake...a forbidden fruit...clothing of their nakedness...and God walking in the garden.  This would be where you want to cue the dramatic music please.  Go ahead...I'll wait.

The narrative of Adam and Eve is about our humanness in full, beautiful display.  But this narrative is NOT an eraser that wipes clean God's original blessedness and proclamation that you are good...VERY good.  Rather, this introduces tension.  Or rather seeks to respond to why we feel tension in our lives.

We all live in that messy middle of blessedness and brokenness.  It is just east of Eden, where we feel like we are so close to what could be an amazing, awesome and life-changing encounter...but we are stuck in a cul-de-sac and can't seem to get our way out of.  Why?  Some say, that is life so deal with it.  Others say it is all our fault as humans.  But Genesis seems to suggest that the tension is part of being fully alive.  David Lose points out that the part of our brain activated in flight or fight is also one of creativity.  We need some of the brain's fear chemicals to be creativity.  That totally explains why cramming for a test in college worked.  But, live too long in that fear...as we are now seeing in children who have spent their lives afraid of being shot or in constant anxiety can leave us hurt.  That totally explains why cramming did NOT work the fourth, fifth, sixth...eventually I did learn.

So, fear is both good and bad.  So is having knowledge.  Paul says, "Even if I have all knowledge and can even move mountains...but have not love...I am nothing."  That is a radical statement.  We don't act like it in the world.  We don't live that way.  Yet, that is what our faith calls us to.  Power, knowledge, and success get us so far...but we still may feel empty.  It is something else that makes us whole.  And it is not the fig leaves we sew together.  At the end of Genesis 3 God clothes Adam and Eve.  God clothes Adam and Eve...not with judgement or smiting...but with bands of love and grace that still sustain us and blesses us.  

I pray as you live in the tension, you will sense the clothing of God's presence surrounding you, giving you peace, and you sense more than a trace of God's grace.