March 4 2016

                                                       March 4 2016

                     A thousand times pierced  

And yet once again

 Every last and final thrust

Hurts more than the first

       Always it feels like the last time- the last drop of sorrow in an over - flowing cup. And yet, is it not darkest just before the dawn?            Crying out in the dimness, a small brown-eyed girl in a brown dress comes to me; sits beside me; lies beside me. Just a baby- how is it that she can acknowledge grief as it should be acknowledged? Blessed are the meek,  for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Promise heaped on promise in this precious Book, all true, all tried, century upon century. 

         Like Christ, Adam chose to die rather than forsake his own. Was the fruit bitter, like death, in his mouth? He chose Eve over Truth- undeceived he took the fruit, undeceived he ate of it. How hard it must have been to walk the Earth in darkness, in questioning and uncertainty after Eden's firm clarity of life and purpose. How many times he must have wondered what it would have been like if he had chosen differently, if he had sought and
trusted his Friend and Father instead of taking his life into his own hands.
   Only Immanuel, God With Us, could die to blot out what we have done. Only Immanuel can offer the grace to say no to sin.

     I've always thought of good and evil as opposite ends of the same spectrum- that if you chose good, your path would lead you farther and farther down the road from  evil. I see now that good and evil are parallel roads, and that each individual person is always only one step away from either good or bad, cleanness or filth, and they must walk this road to the bitter end, fighting and overcoming until we take our last breath. The Son of Man, the last Adam, went before us. 

         I will not leave you comfortless:
                     I will come to you.

                          John 14.18