Romans 5:18-21
Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (ESV)
Constantly Amazed
Friday after Holy Trinity
4 June 2010
I often say to the members of my parish, "It's a good thing I'm not God." I would be nowhere nearly as patient and long-suffering as God is. It doesn't even seem sensible or rational to me that God should have tolerated Adam and Eve after their fall into sin. God, who certainly had the power to start all over with a new garden paradise and a new and improved pair of human beings, simply sought the repentance of our first parents and announced His plan to save them through Eve's Seed.
Instead of starting over with a clean slate by destroying the offending pair, God planned to clean the slate for Adam and Eve and their children through the second Adam who in His person would make all things new. A world suddenly made groaningly old was transformed through the new-making Son of God. I am constantly amazed at this incredible mercy of God, which extends to sinners like me.
Cyril of Jerusalem
"Do you, who are recently come to catechization, want to see the loving-kindness of God? Do you want to see the loving-kindness of God, and the abundance of His long-suffering? Hear about Adam. Adam, God's first-formed man, transgressed. Could He not at once have brought death upon him? But see what the Lord does, in His great love towards man. He casts him out from Paradise, for because of sin he was unworthy to live there; but He 'puts him to dwell over against Paradise' (Gen 3:24 LXX), that seeing how far he had fallen, and from what and into what a state he was brought down, he might afterwards be saved by repentance."
Prayer
Lord Christ, You have made all things new that we might dwell in paradise with You. Grant us to know and lament our great loss in the fall of our first parents, that through repentance and contrition we might drown the old Adam and put on the new, even Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we pray. Amen.
For all our shut ins, Selma Dawson, Juanita Duffala, and Irene Schroeder, that they might wait upon the good and gracious will of God
For all those who wait on God's time while in jail, that their Lord would grant them the peace to reconsider their lives
For the family of Jack Colle, who grieve at the anniversary of his passing
Art: MICHELANGELO, Buonarroti The Fall and Expulsion from Eden 1509-1510