Advent for those Grieving | No. 02
ADVENT DAY TWO
I will put enmity between you and the woman,and between your offspring and her offspring;he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.Genesis 3:15
WHY WE NEED A SAVIOR
Whether you are here because you are a mama mourning the loss of a baby or because you are a friend who is walking alongside someone mourning, hoping to gain insight into their pain -- you know first hand that this world is full of hurt and pain and disappointment. It's broken.
The world as we know it is not the way it was created or originally designed to be. God designed the world in perfection and beauty (Genesis 1-2) and when sin entered the picture (Genesis 3) brokenness and pain and death entered. Many of us lived the majority of our lives blind to the brokenness around us. Yes, we experience a fractured world on a daily basis, but feeling the very real weight of death is something many of never experienced, until now.
When my son died, when I tasted death, it was in that moment that I fully realized my dire need for a Rescuer-Redeemer-Savior-King. I needed Him to restore what was broken. I needed Him to make all things new. I needed Him to heal what was fractured. I had never longed for heaven until that moment.
THE GOOD NEWS BEFORE THE GOOD NEWS
The bible tells us that from the moment brokenness entered the world, God lays out His plan to send a Savior to rescue, to restore, to heal, to make all things new.
In Genesis 3:15 we see what theologians call the proto-evangelical (the first gospel). It’s the pre-gospel. The good news before the good news. It’s the first prophecy we get in the Bible about a messiah who would come. God doesn't give us the details here. In fact there is no mention of the cross or Bethlehem or how exactly this messiah would begin this restoration. We just see "God right in the middle of the fog of war, man and woman shamed, naked, distressed, world broken. He curses the Serpent and says, “One will be born of woman. You will bruise his heel, but he will crush your head.” (from The Village)
THE PROMISE
Despite our sin and our rebellion, despite the fractured world we see before us, despite the magnitude of pain you may be experiencing today, God says this: I'm here. I have a plan. I haven't given up. My power, my glory cannot be thwarted by this evil. I will crush evil.
God promises you today that although evil and brokenness and loss and death are present in our world and in our lives, it will not win in the end. God promised to provide a Messiah, a Savior, a Redeemer who would crush the enemy and would defeat death once and for all. We celebrate the Messiah who came as our Savior, who offers to bring us into relationship with Him and we anticipate His second coming when He will defeat death forever.
