[Monday's Devotional] - Adam

Adam I thought I'd start with the first man on the planet.  Not very exciting I know, and he only gets about 50 verses in the Bible. It tells us that altogether Adam lived 930 years then he died.  Not very thrilling really.  Imagine going to someone's funeral and the priest stood up and said, "Tommy lived for 87 years and then he died.  That's it.  Amen".  Tells us nothing, does it?   But the Bible really doesn't tell us much about Adam either, or what he was like as a man: What did he like to eat – apart from fruit? What did he do to relax? What was his favourite animal? A sabre toothed cat? We don't even know what he looked like.  So let me just speculate for a minute.  From his first breath Adam was completely pure and free from sin.  And not just skin deep, right through.  He started with a clean sheet and lived for 930 years. Unlike Adam we are virtually born into sin.  We've had thousands of years of its effect on our descendants lives, which is passed on to us.  Maybe there is a remnant of that purity somewhere deep inside us, if we could only reach it and bring it to the surface. And I'm left wondering what abilities did Adam have?  Was he even stronger than Samson, or wiser than Solomon?  Was he a better gardener than Percy Thrower, or brainier than Stephen Hawking?  I wonder, was he the ultimate man?    If you could meet him wouldn't you call him 'sir' and ask him what it was like in the Garden of Eden.  Of course he might go into a sulk if you asked that, having been thrown out of paradise.  But then we men can be good at sulking, can't we? And, after all, he lived most of his life knowing that he'd messed things up.  However, it does seem to be that – after a good sulk – he just got on with life to the best of his ability, learning along the way.   So let us not sulk about the way things go, but get on with our lives and do the best we can.  I like to think that at the end God took Adam back into Paradise to live with Him.  We too can strive to live up to God's standard and, hopefully, finally get to join Him too.   Jim Finch   Twitter Website Copyright © 2016 St. Matthew & St. Oswald's Church, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email as a subscriber to the Daily Devotionals Our mailing address is: St. Matthew & St. Oswald's Church 1a New Street Rugby, Warwickshire CV22 7BE United Kingdom Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list Want to be added to our mailing list? - sign up here!