Reader's Guide “The Word for Today” Monday, September 10, 2012 Read Genesis 3 & 4 Continuing the themes begun in the second creation story, the stories of “Adam and Eve” and “Cain and Abel” center around two important questions – “Where are you?” and “Where is your brother?” If the world that God created is a good and orderly world why do we experience that world as a place of pain and suffering mingled with joy and wonder? We all know instinctively that the world is not always good. Reflecting back to that challenge laid down in the second creation story – “Will the creatures God has made be obedient or not?” – the “Adam and Eve” story proclaims to us the awful truth that human beings are not obedient. Tempted by the serpent who claims that if they eat of the tree that God forbade them to eat their eyes will be open and they will be like God, Adam and Eve eat and their eyes are opened all right but all they see is their nakedness – their exposure – and so they hide from the very God who gave them life. God had warned them that if they disobeyed they would die. It is not that God now will kill them – it is their act of disobedience that kills them – and kill them it does. But that is not the whole story. Here is where the question comes in – “Where are you?” God comes seeking his rebellious creatures. God out of love kills animals to provide skins to cover their nakedness and promises a redemption as the story unfolds. The story of Adam and Eve is not just a story about them – it is our story too! At the center of the story is our constant need to run our own lives – to grasp life on our own, to be like God, an act that always kills us too. A gracious God asks, “Where are you?” Once again the foundation is laid for the rest of the story – a story of God seeking his fallen creatures working to redeem them. The story of “Cain and Abel” adds a new twist to the story and another question. If the “Adam and Eve” story centers on the brokenness of the relationship between God and human beings the story of “Cain and Abel” centers on the brokenness of the relationship among people – even those as close as brothers or sisters. Human rebellion is a deadly thing indeed. At the depth of our being we know that we are divided from every other human being around us. We are broken. Into our brokenness God asks a second question like the first – “Where is your brother?” The “Cain and Abel” story proclaims to us the awful truth of our broken relationships and holds out the possibility of restored relationship with one another. Once again this story lays the foundation for what is to come.