“The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”

I would like to trek back to Genesis 3 today and look at the fall of Creation. 

The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” “Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied.  “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’” “You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman.  “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.” The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too.
[Genesis 3: 1-6; NLT, BibleGateway.com]

I feel like I've been so harsh on the first two people who existed.  There’s so many other options, I think to myself,  why did you have to choose the one that was disobeying God?  

As if their goal was to separate themselves from ultimate beauty and perfect love. As if the thoughts in their mind were something along the lines of “today I want my actions to go against the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.” As if they were thinking about the bigger picture. As if they were thinking about the character of God that they had come to know: was this idea that He could be holding back from us in line with His nature? I don’t think they thought about any of that.

You know what?
When we find ourselves sinning, I don’t think we think about any of that either.

The serpent -that embodiment of evil and sin- knows how to veer us off course. Disobedience doesn't normally look like an active choice to go against the Father; generally, it looks the same as how it did with Eve, an idea that God's plans for us are holding back, and that we can fill the gaps and take matters into our own hands. 

The only difference is that Sin is no longer a talking serpent; it's the people around us, it's our own minds, it's the world that screams loud about "independence" and "bigger is better" and "what feels good has to be good for you".  Sin is still deceitful, and God is still good, wanting to meet with us, wanting what is best for us. 

Sin still whispers into our ears, lying about God, telling us that He's not who He says He is. Twisting His words. Trying to break down the foundations we stand on. The serpent decieves us, so we eat. We take part in the fruit that kills us, in the disobedience that breaks us down.

I still feel like I've been too harsh on Eve, on Adam.  They drank the Kool-Aid of believing they know what's best, yes. So have I.  Sin convinced them that disobedience wasn't as detrimental as it really is, just as it's done countless times in my story and just as it will do more times in my life and in the world today.

Be on guard. Have faith in who God is. Take an active part in crushing the serpent's head and thank God for having His heel bruised in order to save the likes of us.

Eden is coming reconciling with creation in the Kingdom of Heaven's invasion. Let's know who our Maker is and know that His way is best.

"There's grace for you, too."

You know, I could sit and say those words to just about anyone. I’m learning how love does things, and how grace and mercy move and dance and coexist. I love getting the opportunity to share that with people, and to grow to show humanity a little more of who God is. Abba is showing me what living loved actually means, how to live in the arena, heart and head all-in, loving recklessly.

But then, what do I tend to do? I get antsy. I get into “strive” mode rather than “His beloved” mode. 

Now this switch in focus isn’t always easy to spot. For me, when I start wanting to work harder and earn something from God, I go the extra mile. Or maybe the extra ten.  That’s kind of my nature; I like hard work.  I study more. Read more. Listen to more podcasts and more sermons, write more poems and paint more. Hang out with more people. Volunteer more. I busy myself with “more”. I exhaust myself and physically and emotionally run on fumes and call it "holy".

I forget that He rested on the 7th day.

I get so mad at myself for slipping up, for not doing enough or being enough, for saying a curse word again or getting mad, for making mistakes or for being tired. I hold these grudges against myself as if I’m the one thrown into the middle of the high-and-mighty religious leaders, but I stay ready to stone myself to death even when they dropped the rocks and left.

I forget that He does not condemn me.

We’re all so hard on ourselves. Maybe you’re not like me, maybe you aren’t as hard on yourself in this way as I am. But I do think there’s heaps of truth in the saying that we are our own worst critics. We replay our mistakes in our head like broken record players, we stop expecting anything good or beautiful to come from these lives we live, we work our tails off just to try and earn a love that’s infinitely out of our pay grade, we make ourselves up so our brokenness doesn’t show anymore, we accept a fate of feeling worthless or unloved because we believe it’s the truth, we try so hard to look good and to do good and we burn out, we let the shadows of our stories define us as if we’re nothing more than a tally sheet of screwups. 

We forget that He asks us to get up.

We forget that He just wants to be with us. 

We forget that He delights in us. 

We forget that striving isn’t fruitful.

We forget that there’s grace for us, too.

I don’t know where you’re at in life. I don’t know who I’m talking to when I type “you”. All I know is that I’m sitting on my living room floor wondering why I work so hard to try and earn His attention when He’s already delighted in me. I'm wondering why I'm so hard on myself when I know I'd never be this hard on anyone else in my pair of shoes. I forget whose I am. I forget that He's got lots of room and I don't have to work hard to be seen. I forget I'm a person, and we're all trying to make it to tomorrow and we're all keeping our head up in hope for a better world and we’re all human beings well acquainted with exhaustion, and God knows that and He wants us to be honest about it. He wants us to know there’s so much grace to go around, there’s room to run and to rest and to break and to heal. 

 He just wants us to keep our eyes on Him, and whether that means listening to a sermon or taking a nap or seeing a friend, we must remember that we’re not tiny gods. We don't have it all together. Humanity is ineffably flawed but His grace is sufficient in the places we can’t be “superhuman”, or even pretend to be. Thank God for that, hey.

There’s grace for us, too. Let’s walk in it.