September 11th

Curses

             So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals!  You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.  And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

            To the woman He said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

            To Adam He said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is thee ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; and dust you are and to dust you will return.”

Genesis 3:14-19

            We were not meant to live like this.  Work was not supposed to be this hard.  Childbirth was not supposed to be this hard.  Relationships were not supposed to be this hard.  Living with the earth was not supposed to be this hard.  Things took a wrong turn a long time ago and humanity has been paying the price ever since.

            Was it the serpent’s fault as he tempted Eve?  Was it Eve’s fault as she gave in to temptation?  Was it Adam’s fault as he just stood by and watch everything transpire?  Was it God’s fault for creating a scenario where this could happen in the first place?  There is plenty of punishment that goes around and God lost His children in the process.

            In some ways this is reassuring.  When we feel overwhelmed at the idea of facing another day and feel that we are carrying more than one person should have to hold…we are right.  When we look at our children being neglected again and fury wells up inside us because they should not have to live like this…we are right.  When we are disgusted by the petty maneuverings of people who are hungry for power and we are done with this world and wish that things were different…we are right.  We were built to live in a world where sin was a foreign concept and we walked and talked with God all the time. Until such a time as that dream is reality, we will never fit in or belong.

            How do we do it?  How do we live in a broken world?  How do we raise our children to be hopeful and resilient and compassionate and strong in a world that is cursed and designed to break them?  Those are the questions that parents have been struggling with for thousands of years.

…………………………

            I don’t have the answers.  I wish I did.  I’ve been staring at a blinking cursor for a couple of hours now, trying to come up with wit or wisdom or some nugget to give us hope.  Here is the best that I have right now:

·         God is not surprised that this world is hard.  He knows what we need to survive and what we need to thrive.  He has been working in this world since before the Fall.  He has been preparing this world for us and us for this world for a long time now.

·         We are not alone.  I wrote this.  You are reading it.  That makes at least two of us.  There are others.  This world is filled with men and women who are struggling with the same fatigue and the same fears and the same failures as you and I.  There are others who live in the same space as we try to figure out how to move forward.

·         Our children are not mistakes.  God could have made the curse much worse.  He could have ended the species back in the Garden.  He chose to let humanity continue.  Generation after Generation, God has invited us to bring our children into this world.  He welcomed me and He welcomed my son.  The boy is not an accident or a mistake. He is a child of Heaven, bound for eternity, and bearing the same image of God as everyone else.

Some day we will be home.  Some day home will be exactly what we were made for.  Until that day comes, let us remember that God is alive and at work within our lives, our world and our children.

           

A moment to reflect:

How do you feel like you don’t fit into this world?