It’s easy for me to look back having read the ending of the story and miss the huge implications of what went down at the Garden of Even when Adam and Eve fell. Yes, I know that Jesus came and redeemed us from all that, but they didn’t know that. Yet.

Eve saw that the forbidden tree was delightful and the fruit was desirable and took and ate of it. Which goes to show that what looks good to you isn’t always good for you. That applies to relationships or careers or anything else. Another way of putting it, borrowed from Tolkien, is “All that glitters is not gold.” I’m sure the Tolkien fanatics reading this (including me)  can finish the rest of that poem.

Here’s something interesting I never thought of before today. Adam and Eve ate the fruit, saw they were naked, tried to cover themselves out of shame, and hid from God because of what they had done. The result has been relational strife ever since. Marriages are hard. Families are hard. Jobs are tough. Creation groans. All because of that one sin.

But Jesus came. He was stripped naked and put on a cross, he was covered by all our sins, and God hid His face from Jesus because He couldn’t look at all that sin. The Bible talks about Jesus as the Second Adam because He succeedes where Adam failed and obeyed God perfectly in every way possible.

Here’s the best part. Through Jesus, we are free to be naked and unashamed in the sense that we can be real and transparent with no fear of condemnation from God, we are covered by His blood and Galatians says that we who have trusted in Jesus have put on Jesus, like putting on new clothes. And we have free access to God and can come boldly to the throne and not have to worry that God will hide from us or hinder us from getting to Him.

The Cross means that everything we’ve ever lost will be restored even better than it was before. All the toil and sweat and tears will not even compare to the reward waiting for us. Best of all, Jesus’ death means that we are innocent again, like we never sinned.

I like to think that the Cross and the Resurrection means that the end will be better than any fairy tale or folktale. The end will truly be, “And we lived happily ever after, and each day after that was better than the last and the adventures, far from ending, had only just begun.”