Scripture: Genesis 3:1-24
- What did God tell Adam and Eve they could not do?
- What was the immediate result of their disobedience?
- How did Adam and Eve respond to God’s inquisition?
- What consequences did Adam and Eve suffer for their disobedience?
- Why do we include this story in our Advent readings?
Meditation on Scripture
“The gospel is bad news before it is good news. It is the news that man is a sinner, to use the old word, that he is evil in the imagination of his heart.” (Telling the Truth, Fredrick Buechner)
Darkness. Paradise Lost. Creature fallen… and the rest of creation follows – Eve, Adam – right on down to each of us, today. “All have sinned.” (Romans 3:23) Or, as the Book of Common Prayer reads: “There is no health in us.”
With the crime, come the consequences: pain, toil, banishment, alienation, death. The gospel is bad news before it is good news. For without darkness, there is no need for light, there is no need for salvation. It was into this sin-darkened world that the first dim light flickered – the light of the hope of the prophets.
