Each day of this year – growup 2010 – a member of the SCPC staff team will post some brief thoughts on the bible-in-a-year passage for that day. Our hope is that these reflections might help you in your own reading and that some might take the opportunity to add their own thoughts on the passage.
Reading the Bible through in a year by yourself will be beneficial. Doing it as a church family will be even better!
Today’s passage: Genesis 1:1 – 4:16
There is so much you could say about these chapters! The first 3 chapters in particular teach us so much about God’s original intention for creation and also about how that intention has been corrupted by human sin – our unwillingness to trust God – to take him at his word.
One thing I noticed by reading all 4 chapters at once was the massive contrast between the first 2 chapters and the next 2 chapters. While the first two are all about life and order and goodness, the second two are the opposite – death, anarchy and evil have taken over.
And yet even in the midst of human sin and evil and God’s righteous judgment, notes of grace can be heard – God’s refusal to simply wipe the slate clean and start again, his care for Adam and Eve in providing clothes for them and even his commitment to the murderous Cain in protecting him in the wild world. In fact, even in the punishment of death, God’s mercy is evident and points us to the fact that God will not allow evil and suffering to go on unchecked – he will bring it to an end.
Praise God that we know this end in Jesus through whom all the evil of sin is being undone and all the goodness of creation is being restored.
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