Paradise Lost
“The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3:22
This is the true inward vision, the faith of seeing, as distinct from the faith of deductive proof. It is an illumination that abides from the beginning, not merely flashes of light that visit you from time to time when you have reached a certain stage. For this light is not to be sought within the recesses of your being but outside yourself and away in another, even in Him who God has sent to be the Light of the World. Once for all, here and now, this light will break on you if you lift up your eyes and behold Jesus Christ with the spiritual vision of the soul.
(The Way of the Sevenfold Secret)
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.
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