The Fall

Our homestead is nestled in a forest. We are seeing the leaves fall from the trees; we are seeing the insects gravitate toward our window screens; we are seeing the spiders spin their webs in places that are not acceptable for our human habits and sensibilities. The trees sacrifice their leaves to contribute to the soil, making their contribution to the renewal of life after the tree falls dead. We are entering a season when the temperature falls, the leaves fall, and we are aware that a season of cold weather is ahead of us.

As all the signs of life fall to a lower arrangement, we may contemplate an historic event. . . a fall of a different king, a long, long time ago. . . in which a man and woman fell out of the luxury of a perfect human existence, because they broke the rule that Creator YWHW had commanded them. After Adam and Eve were banished from Eden; they had to make their way in a “fallen” world, where they had to labor for their food. They found themselves in a cruel world in which might makes right. Maybe the lion was the king of the jungle. The earliest men and women had to work for their food. . . whether they were gathering grains and fruits, or slaughtering an animal. Fruits and vegetables are good, but the humans noticed that the wild animals were killing each other, and that some of the wild animals wanted to kill them! Homo Sapiens learned early on that they needed to use their sapiens brains and their strong arms to kill the beast before the beast killed them! And then after the lion or tiger or bear had been killed, the men and women discovered that they could recover the carcass and eat it. Their motto might have been eat the beast before the beast eats me! So the paths of human survival required, like it or not, slaughter. As human families and tribes migrated from land to land, fording streams, eating plants, killing animals. . . their awareness of this world developed inside their brains and their human souls (which the animals did not have) and they began to stack great stones up to build shelters and huts and even towers, such as the tower of Babel, where their bold venture into earthly life crossed some boundaries that Creator YWHW would not allow. So the prideful bluster of human expansion and presumption got knocked back a few stages, when Creator used his ways and means committee to knock Babylon down so that a new strain or two of human endeavor could have some room to make a new start. Along came Abraham; he seemed to be on Creator’s wavelength. So YWHW, having a new leader to work with, appointed Abraham to initiate a new way of living in which the animal sacrifice would be recognized by the man as holy.

This principle of “holy” took on new significance when Moses came along and established the Hebrew faith, beginning with the ten commandments. The new rules forbade men from killing other men women or children. The expansion of the commandments, the Torah, provided a sacrificial system whereby priests acknowledged in their ritual offerings that the animals sacrificed were the Lord’s provision for the sustenance and growth of the people. So we see that religious sacrifice did not do away with killing. Rather, it sanctified the offering of precious life, so that the slaughter of the animals reminded the people of their dependence on the Lord YWHW. This blog started out with this writer’s contemplation of an awareness that the Fall season of this year begins on Tuesday, Sept 22, one day after the Yom Kippur sacrifice for the Hebrew people. But the greater signifigance for me is that the Lord Yahweh utilized the Hebrew sacrifice to change the history of the entire world, and to save this believer’s mortal soul, by the sacrifice of His only Son at Calvary, about 2000 years ago. So the fall of Man has inflicted great trouble on human history, but the shedding of Jesus’ blood constituted a salvation for me, my family, my Christian brethren, and anybody else who believes that good news! He conquered death! By good news, I mean. . . Jesus’ resurrection demonstrated that life goes on after death. You just have to believe it! So follow Him to that eternal realm, and try not to fall down. Glass half-full