Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Astonishment (02/02/12)
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TITLE: What's Your Choice? | Previous Challenge Entry
By Kathy Stevens
02/09/12 -
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The normally pristine blue sky takes on a dark, grayish cast as it rumbles and flashes. It is frightening – a sensation that is not familiar to Adam and Eve. All of a sudden, the perfect world in which they were created is different. It looks different, sounds different, and feels different.
It seems that everything is being pulled, torn and separated from the brilliance they once knew and has taken on a kind of twisted, serpentine, facade. Where there was once brightness and joy, now the atmosphere drips with a sullen, dingy, veil. Senses are no longer keen and sharp. What is wrong? What is this strange new world into which they have suddenly been thrust?
“Adam, I don’t like this! I’m afraid!”
“Now you’ve done it!” Adam throws an accusing finger in Eve’s face. “You disobeyed God and everything is changed.”
“Me? I think you were right there too, taking a bite out of the same fruit. Why didn’t you stop me? Remember, you were created first. You were supposed to protect me!”
In one moment they had chosen another god. Self! They had let Satan con them into disobeying God’s commandment to not eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were surprised and astonished at the results of a seemingly unimportant fracture in God’s law.
“I gotta be me!” was the theme of the song they sang that day. “It’s only one piece of fruit” was the reasoning they used. It was nothing that would condemn the world or anything like that. One little infraction was all it was – as small as a seed . . . .
Suddenly they were thrust into another dimension, an ugly one that tore them from the safety of the cloud of glory that had surrounded them. When their eyes were opened they saw that they were naked, visible to be seen, and immediately they knew a new sensation, guilt. They saw what sin was and how it affected them. There was no more protection, no glorious covering when they chose Satan’s way. They were bare, naked, vulnerable, and on their own.
This was the thing Satan had promised them – the knowledge of good and evil. They had always known the good, but now seeing the evil, they did not like it.
“We’ve gotta fix it!” they screamed as they tore off fig leaves and stitched them together to try to cover their sin, but they were still ashamed. They knew the world was not the same and they hid themselves.
When God found them that evening, Adam pointed at Eve and said, “The woman You gave me . . . .” But he was the head, and knew he was present when she was being tempted. He could have and should have taken the fruit from her and thrown it away. He could have saved us all from that sin, but he did take and did eat of it.
Did God still love them? Absolutely! He loved them then, He loves them now. His love is forever, and His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting. They, and we as their seed, were in trouble -- we all deserved death. They gave away one of their precious gifts – dominion in the earth. Satan cackled as he took this most valuable commodity from them.
“Now you’re mine, and everything you had! Shriek! Ha, ha, ha, cackle, cackle.” His evil laughter rang out through the corridors of time. “Finally I’ve beaten the Lord of Glory. I have stolen His most prized creation – man, who is made in His image.” The horrific imps and gory beasts danced heartily that day.
But God made a way, Jesus went to the cross. He paid the death penalty that was rightfully our debt. He took all of the sin, pain, disease, torture, the guilty plague of unworthiness, everything that comes with the package through our entrance to this planet.
All in one day, in one moment, He bore it all for every person who was on the earth and all who would come to be here, IF they would receive this precious, free gift.
He continues to this day to call to each one and say, “Choose Me.”
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