The Way Home

As we walk through the verses of the Garden Story in Genesis, we encounter first the sublime relationship between the Creator and the created ones who tended it in His behalf.  After a time came the sin.  After the sin, came the conversation of confrontation, the confession of what had been done, and the spelling out of the consequences.  It was not a moment when the divine Creator could turn His head and pretend He did not see.  Such would have compromised His holiness and His integrity.  In that moment of looking the other way, He would have ceased to be the God whom the Scripture proclaims.

 

Beginning in verse 14 of that 3rd chapter of Genesis the consequences of sin are rolled out on the stage of human history.  As the Lord God spoke, He spoke of things that had never before been seen or experienced in the short history of the creation.  As He spoke words of judgment over the serpent enmity and danger appeared.  "I will put enmity between you and the woman...he will strike your head and you will strike his heel."  (Genesis 3:14-15)  Prior to that moment all of creation lived in a life giving relationship.  No part of the creation had reason to fear another.  All of that now changed.  The world suddenly became a dangerous place where fear and strife would always be present. 

 

The prophet Isaiah would much later describe the restoration which comes with the Kingdom of God as a Garden of Eden moment.  "The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them...The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp..."  (Isaiah 11:6, 8)  Sin not only puts us out of sync with others, but it puts us out of step with the whole of creation.  Instead of experiencing God's presence in all those around us and in all of the creation, we find ourselves living like exiles in a land that is really not our home.  The good news is that there is through the cross of Christ a way home.