Adam – 15 Sept 2008

Over the last few months I have been reading a book entitled “Spadework” by Carl Beech. It sets out Christian foundations using 52 men from the Bible.  Carl started his working life in a bank, but gave everything up when he was convinced that God was calling him to plant a new church.  After some years he became Senior Pastor of a large church with several congregations.  God has now called him to work for Christian Vision for Men (CVM) where he is National Director.

Here is a précis of just 5 of those men starting, unsurprisingly, with Adam.

Adam lasts for around 50 verses in the Bible and ends with this less than detailed verse:

“Altogether, Adam lived 930 years, and then he died”. Genesis 5:5 [NIV]

After reading about Adam we still don’t know what he was like as a man.  We don’t even know what he looked like.  But from his first breath he was completely clean and pure.  Which is how we are when we born.  So what can we learn from Adam? Well, for the best part of nine centuries he lived with the knowledge that he had been cast out from God’s presence and had lost paradise.  I wonder if he was a sulker?  I’m sure we have all been given a real going-over by a boss, slamming his hand on the desk and ripping in to us as if we were guilty of the most horrendous crime.  And it may have been that we were the fall-guy for someone else.  So what did we do? We went away and sulked.  Men are good at sulking (some women are too).

So what did Adam do? Well, he may have had a bit of a sulk, but the way the story is told it looks like he knew he had messed up but got on with making the best of a very bad situation.  After all, he had been designed to live in God’s presence for ever and now he would grow old and weary.  He didn’t even know that Jesus would come and save us all from the sin that he and Eve had started.  But it seems that he lifted his head, got hold of the plough and just got on with it.  We need to be the same, but asking God’s forgiveness when we get it wrong and thanking Him when He sees us safely through.  The reality is we don’t have time for sulking, we are Jesus’ witnesses and we can’t expect others to take notice if we are full of self-pity.

Thank God daily for Jesus. Because of Him paradise is returning!

Jim Finch