Our story, recap:
The serpent lied. Adam disobeyed. God declared war. Here we are.
(The serpent is still lying. Man is still disobeying. God’s war against lies and disobediences still goes on. And we are still here – in the thick of it.)
God loved. Second Adam obeyed. God declared war. In Second Adam, we were offered peace.
(God still loves. Second Adam still reigns in obedient victory. God still furnishes ‘weaponry’ for the final skirmishes. Peace is still on offer to us here – in the thick of it.)
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Our story, abbreviated recap:
Lies – Disobedience – War.
Love – Obedience – Peace.
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We are living in God’s story, the intriguing saga of the Creator in loving, longsuffering search of relationship with His Creation. Our greatest joy is that we have entered the story via Second Adam. The millennia-long God vs. Satan match has been decided. God stomps Satan. Satan is demolished. But that’s the ultimate outcome. We live the penultimate – the one-before-the-end, where flare-ups occur, fires are started, people get wounded (and die), reversals are painful, longing for things to be made right is burdensome, desiring righteousness be re-established requires prayerful perseverance, accepting the invitation to receive God’s love and safety and promise of eternity is the 24/7 challenge to our ‘I’ll do it myself’ old nature and the highest and purest joy of our ‘in Christ’ new nature.
We’re like the cast for a movie who’ve taken time to read the script. The plot, the characters, the ending, are all known but now it’s time to do the hard work of memorizing lines, getting into character, and putting together a compelling piece of cinema. Actors often confess they get completely immersed in the story and are more impacted by the ending than the vast majority of first-time viewers. And so it is with us. Our time on this ‘mortal coil’ is all-consuming with relationships and community to nurture, love and celebrations to share, griefs to gently cradle, faith to build up, and worship to offer. And we do all this with wars within and wars without still raging, all the while staying grounded in love, knowing the final scene, the grand finale, and singing our theme song, our anthem: ‘Victory in Jesus.’ So good! See y’all tomorrow at 10 AM, 4 PM, 6 PM. PD
