advent day twenty-three

So the LORD God said to the snake:

‘Because of what you have done, you will be the only animal to suffer this curse-

For as long as you live, you will crawl on your stomach and eat dust.

You and this woman will hate each other;

Your descendants and hers will always be enemies.

One of hers will strike you on the head,

And you will strike him on the heel’

Genesis 3 :14-15

Way back at the dawn of time, it looked as if man and woman had blown it. We had the chance to live forever in the garden of Eden, surrounded by good things, and we couldn’t resist the temptation to think we knew better. How the dark forces of this world must have laughed in triumph as God threw Adam and Eve out of Paradise– forever doomed to live with the consequences of their choice, realizing throughout the ages that not only was it a wrong choice, but that by their own efforts, men and women could never regain that harmony with God, with each other and with creation that had held out such promise at the beginning of it all.

And then comes Christmas Day.

In his children’s book ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, C.S. Lewis describes a ‘deeper magic’ which comes from before the dawn of time, and has a power even greater than the evil which separated God from man in the garden of Eden. The birth of Christ into the world heralds the start of that deeper magic. God intervenes into human history to change our futures. When Jesus grows up, he will face the snake who tricked Eve in the Garden of Eden, and strike him on the head– strike him with a death blow that turns the tables on the way we see the world, our place in it, and what happens when we die.

Christ was chosen even before the world was created, but because of you, he did not come until these last days. And when he did come, it was to lead you to have faith in God, who raised him from death and honoured him in a glorious way.

1 Peter 1: 20, 21

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!