Glimmers Day 1 Hope In The Darkness

John 1:1-5
John 1:12-18
Genesis 3:1-6
Hosea 6:4-7

Glimmers, Day 1

My five year old looked up from the Jesus Storybook Bible he held on his lap. His brow was furrowed and his eyes were a little teary.

“Mama, I don’t understand. If God knows everything and He is always good, then why did He let Eve and Adam sin in the Garden of Eden? If He really loved us, why didn’t He just make that not happen? He could have done it. I KNOW He could have. So why didn’t He just do that?”

I pulled him on to my lap and hugged him. “It’s hard to make good choices, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes,” he huffed. He was just coming out of a time out, and his thoughts were centered around a poor choice he had made a little while earlier. No doubt, he was thinking about how much easier life would be without the opportunity to make a bad choice.

I can totally relate to how he felt. And maybe you can, too?

Sometimes, after I’ve said a harsh word or entertained a negative thought, I wish my own fleshly feelings could be cancelled out completely. I mean, how much easier would this life be without any opportunity to do or say the wrong thing? I think I could win that game. Right? How about you? Do you find yourself frustrated when you haven’t made the choice the Lord would have you make?

The kind choice.
The honest choice.
The forgiving choice.
The loving choice.

If we’re being honest? I think we can all agree that this refining fire of the Holy Spirit-filled life stuff is exhilarating and so necessary. We need His constant teaching to shape our hearts as He trains us to turn from sin. At the same time, it doesn’t always feel good. In fact…(and maybe I’m speaking only for me here) often it is painful. As He works and refines us, it’s easy for us to subscribe to the feeling that our sin has hooked us so deep, we will never be able to separate ourselves from it.

But Loves? That’s because we can’t.
No matter how hard or long or mightily we try, we will never be able to remove our own sin.

When we find ourselves feeling trapped under the weight of a sin we can’t seem to escape, or fighting despair as we stand at the altar, wondering how we are in the same place, again, or feeling hopeless in the face of our frail humanity, we must remember Whose responsibility it is to save us from our sins… and turn toward Him.

That sovereign, weighty duty belongs only to Jesus.
He paid a hefty price, and for us to attempt to shoulder the weight of our salvation on our own shoulders is both foolish and wrong.

What my five year old didn’t fully grasp (and many of us may sometimes forget) is that Jesus was always ever “the Plan.” God wasn’t surprised by Adam and Eve’s sin as they chose to live by their rules instead of God’s design. He knew it would happen. And while His heart undoubtedly broke (and continues to break) at that separation, He also wrote glimmers of hope into His story.

I mean, if any of us could have ever walked without sinning, it would have been that first son, Adam, and his Eve, right? They had no outside influences. No violent television shows or easy access to pornography. They didn’t have broken families or spend time with other broken people who might portray broken lives for them.

And yet, they fell.
Just as we fall.

God knew, all along, that the only One who would ever walk this earth without falling would be He, Himself.

Emmanuel, God with us.

God the Son, come down to His people in the form of the weakest of beings: a baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. He was the powerful King Who had been foretold from generation to generation, but He was not the King anyone expected.
He was Jesus: perfect love and our everlasting Hope.

Loves? God never expected us to save ourselves.
He never expected we could live a sinless, perfect life, but He longs for us to choose Him above all else! His passion for us runs deeper than any we can imagine. Read His words about you in the book of Hosea if you have any doubt, and know that the God of the universe feels those things for you and me, His Bride!

From the beginning of His story until now, the fall of Eve and Adam has always pointed straight to the eternal hope we find in Christ Jesus, the sinless Son of God Who gave Himself to pay for our sins and secure our eternal citizenship in Heaven!
Grab hold of this hope and share it today, Sisters!

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