Advent Day 4: Genesis 3:1-24

Read Genesis 3:1-24. 

Ponder

• Understanding light as truth, goodness and beauty and darkness as symbolizes sin, death and shame, consider this passage. What sections of Genesis 3 point to light? 

• What sections convey a sense of darkness? 

• Focus on verses 7-13 and consider Adam and Eve’s actions and words. How do they reflect shame, brokenness or darkness? 

• Even knowing what they’d done, God came looking for Adam and Eve. Even in their shame, he gave them the opportunity to acknowledge their wrong. When has he shown you that kind of mercy? 

Meditate

God had created a perfect place where humanity could enjoy perfect unity with him, and in one instant it was all gone. The man and woman believed and acted on the serpent’s lies, and where there had once been light, beauty and goodness, darkness now tinged everything. 

Sin had entered the world, and with it, death, hostility, shame, fear, guilt and separation. The intimate relationship that Adam and Eve had enjoyed with God was shattered, and that reality not only affected their relationship with God, but also their relationship with each other. All that had once been bright and beautiful now sank into the shadows. Intimacy was replaced with hostility and separation. The joy of work was now tarnished with adversity and toil. Life with death; light with darkness. 

But even on that dark day when God announced the consequences of sin on the creation he loved, he also whispered hope. To the serpent, God promised an Overcomer, a Savior, a bright beam of light in all the darkness of the day: “He will strike your head, but you will strike his heel.” 

In other words, Satan may have won the battle that day, but he wouldn’t win the war. Defeat was certain because the Messiah would one day deliver the crushing blow. Darkness had descended like dusk upon the beautiful world God had created, but the light would always find a way of getting through. 

You have to understand the depth of the darkness to recognize the beauty of the light. Sometimes, when you are walking in sin, God’s merciful light and love has a way of shining through all the cracks and broken pieces and drawing you toward him. 

That day in the garden was a dark day, but it wasn’t a hopeless one, either, because the God who created and crafted the garden had planned all along to redeem it through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. What humanity had destroyed, God would make right—by giving us himself. 

Today may be a dark day, but it isn’t a hopeless one either.