Then It All Fell Apart
Genesis 3:8-15
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned”
– The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats
Faced with the choice between life and knowledge of good and evil, the first two humans chose knowledge. From that point on, things fell apart. The bond between Creator and creature was broken, and the whole world became “subject to futility” in the words of St. Paul in Romans 8. But even as the world spun downward into decay, God made a promise: the offspring of woman would crush the head of the deceiving serpent. The Lord had taken into account this possibility, that evil and good would be loosed on the world in place of life. The perfect goodness of the Son of God, Jesus, would run the gauntlet of the evil of the human race. In that collision, death would be destroyed, and life prevail.
Holy and Mighty God, leave us not to bitter death, but rescue us from false knowledge that leads to despair and gives us knowledge of the One who bring life, even Jesus Christ. Amen.