Monday, December 2, 2024
Scripture: Genesis 1:26-31

James Weldon Johnson’s poem, Creation, reminds me of something easily forgotten – God delights in creation. Made in God’s image, Adam and Eve once lived in peace with God and the creation, reflecting divine love and blessing. In God’s eyes, it was “very good!”

Still, we more often remember their exile from the garden, a painful inheritance of brokenness and sin. As I write this week, the news of the tragic shooting of 7-year-old Mason Jenkins on his front porch in Burlington brings our exile into sharp, heartbreaking focus—again!

Advent is a time to be honest about grief while also reaching for hope. I’ll frame that hope this way: Even though Adam and Eve left Eden, did Eden truly leave them? I don’t think so. The garden is gone, but not forgotten. We know that homesickness of soul, the wordless ache for a closeness once shared with God. We just don’t know how to get there anymore.

Advent is also a good time to ask yourself: How much farther do I want to go my way? Going home means returning to the image of God we carry, our greatest inheritance from Adam and Eve. As you do, you may find that the garden grows wherever you nurture it, sowing the seeds of the Word and tending all the new shoots of God’s kingdom pushing through the world’s sin-hard soil.

It’s hard work, but God who breathed life into dust can animate you for this sacred purpose. Jesus came to heal, restore and forgive; to close the gap we had made with God. In him, we reclaim what was lost and proclaim what we find every day of our lives. Come, Lord Jesus!

Christopher Ingram is our pastor and married to Jeanell Cox and father to Nathaniel, Isaac and Benjamin.