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Morning Devotion for the Season of Epiphany

February 8, 2023

Invitatory

From the rising of the sun to its setting my Name shall be great among the nations, and in every place incense shall be offered to my Name, and a pure offering; for my Name shall be great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him.

Reading - Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17

In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground,* and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’

Meditation - Winnie Smith

Have you ever felt as though God was testing you? Maybe it was at a particular moment: there was a $50 on the ground and you suspected the person who just walked past you dropped it, but you could really use the cash, so you didn’t tell them. Or maybe more generally, you experienced one difficult thing after another and were so tempted to lash out and blame God for allowing all of these bad things to happen. I wonder if Adam felt that way in this early excerpt from Genesis. Adam has just been created by God “from the dust of the ground,” and is immediately tested. God puts him in this beautiful Garden of Eden, a place God has created and in which “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food” has been planted. Adam comes into the world and is given paradise, but with a stipulation. He must not eat of the fruit of one particular tree.

Sounds like a test to me.

But I make a mistake when I hear this in that way. Hearing this story as a test is just another illustration of my - our - tendency to make everything we hear and read in the Bible transactional. God gave Adam a beautiful place to live and then immediately told him what not to do there. God gave and God took away, in almost the same moment. We know how the story goes: Adam and Eve ate of the fruit and they were cast out of the Garden and into the world. God likely knew how the story would go, too. If He had been giving a test, He knew that Adam would fail. The premise that God’s interactions with Adam and Eve and all humankind are transactional is just too easily refuted. We will always fail because we will never fully live up to God’s standards. And still, God will be with us. In the Old Covenant, we were promised God’s constancy, and in the New Covenant, God’s promise of salvation to those who believe in Him. No test required. Only the promise to love God and love others. 

We are tested every single day. We constantly have to discern right from wrong, what God would have us do versus what we want to do. Rather than feeling like this is a test, I hope that we can see this as part of the gift given to us in creation. We are not being tested so that God can keep a score sheet and one day tell us how we’ve done. We are being given the freedom to choose because God gave us that ability when He breathed life into Adam’s nostrils. God trusted us with care of His creation, and gave us the tools we needed to know wrong from right. We will continually fail. We will eat the fruit we know we shouldn’t. But the next day we will be able to get up and make a better choice, to listen to God a little closer, and to be grateful for all these ups and downs of our lives.

The Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven,

     hallowed be thy Name,

     thy kingdom come,

     thy will be done,

         on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

     as we forgive those

         who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

     but deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

     and the power, and the glory,

     for ever and ever. Amen.