Today's Lesson from Genesis 3:22-24:
22 Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
Sometimes someone will come to me frustrated and disillusioned by the world and I will say to them, "We are west of Ft. Worth. We are west of Abilene. But we are still east of Eden."
It's a hard lesson but one we have to come to terms with. East of Eden things do not grow by themselves. We have to earn everything by the sweat of our brow and even then sometimes the crop fails.
Part of the task of life is coming to terms with the way life is. It's playing the cards we've been dealt. In my heart I will always long for Eden, but we have to learn to live in Lubbock.
The good news is that God goes with us.
This is the end of chapter 3 - the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall. But if you keep reading into chapter 4, you see that God is there too, still with the first family. He decided to go with them.
Life is no paradise. It is a struggle full of hardship and disappointment. We are east of Eden; but God is too.
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