Cain and Able

I should be writing something about Christmas. Maybe later. Right now I am still thinking about violence.


Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go out to the field." And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him.
(Gen 4:8)

And there we are; right there in the fourth chapter. The Bible is barely started telling the story of God and there we are bringing violence. From the beginning.

No matter how sad and upsetting any of the murders that happen around the world, nothing will change until we heed what God said to Cain two verses before:

The LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it." 

(Gen 4:6-7)

We have yet to master holding sin at the door. And I use the plural here because we pull the trigger as well. We cannot stand back, point and say, "Look how much more evil that person is than me!" We are in this together. This is what Cain forgot. This is what Adam and Eve forgot. This is what we forget when we point and separate ourselves from others.

This is the Law of the Bible, it crushes us under the weight of our condemnation. 

This is the Good News of the Bible, we are rescued from this condemnation.

The problem is that we choose to live as our old selves and not as our new. We continue to put our trust only in ourselves and not in God.

(5 Children die everyday in our country from abuse.)