… and I heard her murmur… ‘pardon my stumble… “
(1st in a 3-part series)
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side[e] of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” – Genesis 3:21-24
I love words. Like this one… F-A-L-L. Fall. It can mean so much… like a season when the leaves change colors, and the temperature cools down and we love being outside more than we do when it is 100+ degrees out. Fall can also mean a tumble. People still get confused about it… “did she fall and break her hip?” or “did her hip break causing her to fall?” Hip doctors can usually tell which one. Also… I’ve heard there are people still who fall in love… just as easy as it is to fall in a hole when one is not paying attention…. And FALL pokes at our timing of things as everyone knows it’s just a few weeks away where we “FALL back” to get that one extra hour on that one day…
The Bible speaks of FALL this way… as it seemed everything was good with God and the creation. The man and the woman had a great relationship with God… having everything they needed… including God’s protection and above all else… God’s love… but the man and the woman disobeyed God… tried to blame each other… then blamed a snake for entreating them to be like God! And it happened… as the man and the woman had their falling out with their Creator and were banished from the great garden of Eden where everything was perfect… and I’m pretty sure it must have felt like a water-fall… because the stumble took them to a place from which they could not return. It’s a good story… a faithful one… as it answers the questions every little child wonders… asking their parents things like… “why does it hurt when I fall off my bike?” and “why does daddy have to go to work?” and why can’t my friend be nice?” FALL goes way back… to the beginning of time and keeps showing up with each generation. Think Hatfields and McCoys… North and South… Donkeys and Elephants… East and West… Sufis and Sunnis… Russians and Ukraines… Palestinians and Jews… as we wonder… will it ever stop?
Maybe the answer is just plain NO. Maybe we don’t want it to stop. Someone suggested the trouble with churches these days is that the ‘ecumenical movement of the 60’s and 70’s was so successful that Lutherans and Roman Catholics have stopped fighting each other as have the Methodists and Presbyterians along with the Baptists and the other Baptists… so that churches have taken the fight inside their own walls… causing a rise in non-denominational churches who seem to not want to fight anyone about anything… causing much of the culture to yawn ignoring the goodness churches provide and the great goodness they offer to all who dare believe.
All this said… the FALL is the answer people of faith offer to anyone who questions why things don’t go their way or any good way for that matter… as it’s deeply rooted in our psyche and souls that while we believe in God… that there really is a God… we just don’t trust what God has to offer and we’d rather be God unto ourselves…
But… here’s the good news in all this… and remember it’s never good news until we come to understand there is bad news … the bad news which points us to better news… that even in our disobedience… God still loves us and will never stop! Faith matters… especially to God!
(Part 2 — “After the Fall”)
murmurings 