Fresh Start Devotionals

Grace It would be presumptuous for me to think I could imagine what was going through Adam and Eve’s minds as they stood over Abel’s grave. After knowing innocence, in a way we’ve never known it, they felt the full weight of this terrible crime. In the same way a bright light is more intense in total darkness, this dark sin had to be more intense against the background of their knowledge of goodness. Certainly they suffered because their son was dead. But I’ve got to believe they also suffered because their other son was so spiritually dead that he could kill his own brother. While they ached for their dead son, they had to long for their fugitive son with equal intensity. As the numbness waned, the harsh reality of their emptied nest had to set in. An empty nest is one thing, an emptied nest another. There was no reason why their home had to be so silent, no reason that is except for Cain’s sin. But was it Cain’s sin they were suffering from? In one sense, yes. Cain, in a jealous rage, rose up against his own flesh and spilled his blood. But in another sense, Adam and Eve made some choices that enabled Cain’s sin. Do you think they ever second guessed themselves? In their empty home, do you think they ever longed for the wholeness in the garden that God evicted them from? Don’t you imagine that they felt culpable every day of their lives and knew that while Cain made his own choice, he made a choice that was only possible because of a choice they had made years ago while standing in front of the Tree of Good and Evil? Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” (NASB) The spread of sin is epidemic. My prayer is that I won’t be a carrier and infect anyone, especially my children. Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).