God saw all He had made, and it was good. There was no blemish, or blot, or mistakes. Adam is placed in the garden sanctuary to dress and keep it, and the story of mankind begins with a wedding. But the honeymoon is soon tainted by the arrival of a dark serpent bent on deceiving the woman, and then, by her, defeat the priest-king of the planet.
The serpent succeeded. The man didn’t even do battle with the worm. Man was overthrown, and subjected to the lordship of that wicked dragon. God comes and pronounces judgement on the serpent: it would one day have its head crushed, even as it wounded the Seed of the woman.
God then tells Eve that “in sorrow†she would bring forth children. Think of the implications. Children are the continuation of life, and the woman was the vessel whereby the life which God had created was to be perpetuated. What ought to have been the joy of a woman became mingled with great sorrow. Bringing forth life would not be an event of unmingled joy. Instead of ease and blessing, would be trouble, and pain. With each new child was another reminder of another death that would surely come. Another sinner was born
The womb of Eve was the first place to feel the consequences of the dragon-curse. But when God was about to begin a new creation, He sends an angel to a young virgin to tell her that by the Holy Ghost she was going to conceive the promised seed. The womb of Mary became the very first place where the Second Person of the Trinity took on human flesh, in order to slay the serpent.
The curse of our sin had spread out like wildfire and affected and tainted and ruined everything. But when Mary conceived, by the power of the Holy Spirit, God was telling us that He had come in order to destroy all the works of the devil (1 Jn. 3:8). He came to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found. The serpent would soon be defeated by the Savior. But first the Savior arrived in the womb of a woman, the very place where the dragon-curse had first been felt.
If it were chess, the Incarnation was God putting Satan in check, the Cross took Satan’s queen, and the Resurrection was checkmate. Or as Tolkien put it:
The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy.
JRR Tolkien
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