Genesis 3:15
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.”
It all started with a promise.
Before eggnog and Ebenezer Scrooge, before carols and candlelight services, there they stood, ashamed and afraid, the first transgressors reeling from the first transgression. They had enjoyed creation as it was intended, a peaceful and perfect world. But everything changed so quickly. They’d been deceived by a cunning enemy, and the stain of sin began to spread like an infection, corrupting the heart of man and the whole of creation.
Sickness, disease, war, famine. And death.
But amidst the thorns of consequence, a blossom of promise: there will be a child, born of a woman, who will crush the deceiver once and for all. But not without cost.
And so the waiting began. Amidst man’s struggle with sin and the broken world in which he lived was the expectation that one day, everything that was wrong would once again be made right, an expectation that would find its fulfillment in an old trough filled with swaddling cloth.
Come, Desire of nations, come!
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Adam’s likeness now effaced,
Shine thine in the dimmest place;
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love!
- Hark the Herald Angels Sing
