When our story was young,

Our very first chapter strung

On the rungs of history and earth had just begun to breathe.

Breathe, then, from the mouth of God

filled the lungs of his clay-made image bearers,

the wearers of a legacy they could not yet understand

and a tragedy they would yet demand by doubt

and descent into

Attendance to the criticism of

A dragon speaking scarcity and deficit

Maleficent, the serpent’s anti-benediction

Wreaking the dislocation of the

Bearers of God’s face from their souls

And from the Father’s light,

Exiling them from Eden

Adam and Eve become the

Progenitors of scattered and divided

Tribes, suspicious of each other

And disordered within themselves

Empires locked in strife over wealth

And nation-states gripped with corrupted entitlement

Fighting erupting by the assumption of scarcity

Generations consigned to their darkness

But hearken, open, welcome, listen

To an echoing insistence that

That the mission of God has not been broken

And that it will restore as chosen, these

The exiles of Eden;

Penned in pining, aching, they await

Their God

The Father spoke in promise

Presciently electing their descendent

To confront the dragon bent on their dissuasion

This descendant, sent by God

To dwell on earth

And crush the serpent’s head

God designed to arch the story back

To peace and wonder

Wheel the fray around to clasp

The rivets of eternity complete

And reconciled

Wondrous words he spoke to the

Keepers of promise

Abraham and Sarai selected

For the blessing of the scattered nations

Their descendant son

Predicted

Like David: king,

like Melchizedek: priest

Of whom the poor will sing,

With whom the freed captives will feast,

One

Anointed King to seek and save the lost

And recall the scattered to the temple,

Built by heaven,

Which is Eden which is reconciliation,

Which is peace

To a people living in darkness,

Grim prospects their inheritance,

To those thought forgotten

A light was promised

A man to cease the clamour of hammers chiseling idols

And a prince of peace to devastate the engines of war

A man to sever the principalities from their powers,

And make obsolete the zero-sum stratagems

Of scarcity fueled humanity

To scared and divided children of the Exile

Scatter shot across an earth that groans in anticipation.

The Son of Man would come.

When cruel imperialism bit down

in Roman incisors

upon the children of covenant

Who were bound concurrently by local self-righteous legalism

When the poor languished under their substitute shepherds’ negligence.

The Exile of Eden having strayed so far from their genesis.

When the world had lost its center

Into the mess would enter Christ.

When the world was lost to darkness,

Then came – at last – the light.