Don’t you just love this little guy?
Obviously I do because I keep using his picture! Seeing pictures of my wife’s baby pictures or my own; oohhhing and ahhhing over our own children and grandchildren’s baby pictures make my heart ache for a simpler time-for a time when our innocence was easier to believe.
I got to thinking, to when or where would i need to set the dates on my time machine to go back and start again to perhaps create a different future and a different present. Oh, I am not down on the world or the human race, but – as a friend said today – “couldn’t we be kinder?”
Would we go back to the early part of our nations’s birth and be able to end slavery with the founding fathers? History tells us that slavery was a key issue but it was left unsettled in order to not sabotage the new nation being formed. Right or wrong, we had to live with it, and it cost hundreds of thousands of lives to settle the issue politically in the USA. Even then it has taken decades for all races to enjoy the impact of freedom.
Then when we look further we see that hatred, prejudice, war, violence, and inequities have been in every civilization in every country…anywhere there are people these cultural poisons exist. But we also see genuine love, kindness, mercy, sharing of blessings, and graciousness existing alongside the opposite influences.
Here’s my conclusion: go ahead and set your time machine to any location or time period you choose, but if you want to reset the world, you would have to return to the innocence of the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve reigned on the earth with the authority from Almighty God our Creator. That is the only time in history, as far as I can tell, that love, justice, kindness, selflessness, and cooperation were the overwhelmingly dominant human qualities. Why? Because they were in complete harmony with the God who made them.
This article could get very long, but let me wrap it up. In Matthew 12:25 we find the key. A house or a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. As with Adam and Eve, every human being faces temptations and challenges. I don’t know how long they were together in the Garden prior to their fall (Genesis 3), but they did ultimately choose to try to do life without God’s loving care and authority. Even angels fell from heaven when they followed Lucifer in rebellion against God, our heavenly Father.
We have the same choice as have all people of all time and in all places. (Romans 1) We would be wise to accept God’s plan for our return to innocence and a life of love for Him and others and even our own self. We can’t will ourselves to be right with God/innocent of sin, but Jesus made a way. (Ephesians 2:8-10) (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Have you ever taken Jesus as His Word and believed His life and death on the cross and resurrection from the dead were all for your innocence and so you could be declared right with God…not by your works, but by His work?