Day 1 — The World We Recognise
Opening prayer
Lord God, help me to see the world truthfully—and to hear your word of hope within its pain. Amen.
Headline
The Bible explains both the goodness we remember and the brokenness we cannot escape.
Genesis 3:1-24
3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”
11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”
12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,
“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”
16 To the woman he said,
“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”
20 Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming swordflashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Comment
Yesterday Andrew Browning, an obstetric surgeon who works for the Barbara May Foundation, began his sermon at St Andrew’s with the true story of Moshe, a young woman from a village in central Tanzania. Married in her early teens, she endured two days of obstructed labour and then a five-hour motorbike journey to hospital. Her baby had died. Although an operation saved Moshe’s life, she was left with an obstetric fistula. For eighteen months she lived in isolation and shame at the edge of her family compound.
Her suffering presses an unavoidable question upon us: what has gone wrong with our world? Genesis 3 does not offer a detached theory. It tells the story of our rebellion against God and describes the world in which we actually live.
The serpent invites the woman to distrust God’s word and doubt God’s goodness. The man and woman grasp at autonomy: they want wisdom on their own terms, apart from the God who made them. The immediate results are shame, hiding, blame and fractured relationships. Sin is not merely breaking an arbitrary rule. It is turning away from the source of life—and so death enters human experience.
The consequences reach into every part of life. Childbearing, which should be an uncomplicated sign of life and joy, is marked by pain. Marriage is strained by conflict. Work becomes toil. The ground resists us. Our bodies return to dust. Genesis 3 explains why we can still see the goodness of creation and yet encounter suffering even in its most life-giving moments. This is the birth into which every human being is born.
Yet judgement is not God’s last word. God comes looking for Adam and Eve, calling them out of hiding and giving them an opportunity to confess. They blame one another—and even God—but he does not destroy them. Instead, he clothes them with garments of skin, tenderly covering their shame before sending them from the garden. Andrew compared this with Jesus washing the feet of disciples who would soon deny and betray him. The God who judges sin continues to care for sinners.
Even as God announces the curse, he promises that the woman’s offspring will one day crush the serpent’s head. The rescue is only a seed here, but the rest of the Bible shows it growing. God himself will enter our broken creation in Jesus, bear its curse and open the way back to life with him.
Christian faith does not ask us to deny pain or pretend that death is natural and harmless. It allows us to lament them as enemies, while trusting the God who has promised their defeat.
Moshe’s experience gives these ancient words a human face. Her physical injury was compounded by the shame others placed upon her. Genesis helps us distinguish guilt from shame without pretending either is small. Adam and Eve really disobeyed; they also became afraid of being seen. God’s question, ‘Where are you?’ (v.9), is not the question of an uninformed deity. It is an invitation to step out of concealment and return to relationship. His clothing of them is undeserved care: he attends to the very vulnerability their rebellion exposed.
The passage therefore trains us neither to sentimentalise suffering nor to assume that those who suffer most must be personally to blame. We live together east of Eden, where another person’s sin, broken systems and mortal bodies can wound the innocent. The right response is truthful confession, compassionate presence and hope in God’s promised offspring. When we meet someone carrying shame, the God of Genesis calls us to move toward them with dignity and practical care, not away from them in judgement.
Why does God want me to hear this today? Because God wants you to name the world’s brokenness honestly while trusting his promised rescue. He wants you to come out of hiding, receive his mercy and become a person who extends that mercy to others.
Reflect
- Where do you see the pattern of distrust, hiding or blame in Genesis 3 reflected in your own life?
- How does Genesis 3 help you make sense of both the beauty and the suffering of human life?
- What signs of God’s mercy can you see even within this chapter of judgement?
Closing prayer
Merciful God, I confess that I too distrust your goodness and choose my own way. Thank you that you seek sinners and promise a rescuer. Help me to face this broken world honestly and to place my hope in you. Amen.
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