Lenten Lights is a series of devotional readings leading up to Easter. A brief introduction to the series can be read here.
Second Sunday of Lent (if reading weekly)
or
Palm Sunday (if reading daily)
[Six candles lit before reading]
God created people to give him glory. And he created a perfect place for them—a place that reflected his glory. He gave them everything they could need or want for happiness.
BUT they listened to God’s enemy. They didn’t really believe God’s gifts to them were enough for them. So they turned their backs on God, and they lost their perfect place to live and their perfect friendship with God. Now, they could see pain and futility and death in their future.
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.... And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”. . .
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”...
When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate....
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”
The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”
Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”
The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate”....
To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children....”
And to Adam he said, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.... By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
[Snuff the next candle. Do not light again until Easter.]
Therefore . . . sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. . . .
(Taken from Genesis 2:8-3:19; Romans 5:12)
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Taken from Lenten Lights, by Noel Piper
