We are moving out. Its not that much of a wrench, nothing in the place was properly finished and we rattled about in a flat with much more space than we actually needed. In a way I feel robbed because I couldn’t have afforded a comparable property in another location. It’s like having two seats to ones self on the train and feeling a little peeved when it’s legitimately occupied. Having what you need or deserve often feels like being short-changed.

It is kind of scary. Making a home is such a primitive instinct and giving it up unwillingly always has echoes of abandonment and loss regardless of the affection in which you hold it. I remember being made redundant in the full knowledge that another job was waiting for me. I knew it was the job, not me, that was being terminated yet I still felt a keen sense of loss. I think it’s the feeling of not being in control – not being the master of your destiny.

Crises have either a purging or necrotising effect – they either force you to make life changing decisions or make the decisions for you, in which case you become a hostage to fate whose only destination is death. Isn’t that what we ultimately fear? We have a saying, “it’s not the end of the world you know,” which supposes that this is a theoretical possibility. When God said to Adam that as soon as he ate from the tree of knowledge he would die, he didn’t mean that Adam would drop dead at that moment but that he would be subject to death.

Once the prohibition order was placed on this building I became subject to the order. I am still here but my fate is sealed. The Greek word ‘eon’ (literally ‘age’) is sometimes translated as ‘world’ in the New Testament, so I could say my ‘world’ has come to an end. This is the end of a very short era. Once God had dealt with Adam and Eve they gave birth to two sons and that pretty well wraps them up apart from the having one more son. They must have had daughters too and, presumably, many more sons but from then on they cease to be part of the narrative.

Adam had the pleasure of tending to the Garden of Eden but his disobedience meant that everything around him was subject to death. He now had to deal with weeds, poor soil and disease. He was reduced from being God like to being a survivor and being the survivor of your own catastrophe is a bitter pill to swallow. God’s very first words to Adam and Eve were a command to fill the earth with their offspring. Secondly, he said that they would dominate the earth, its flora and fauna. Interestingly it was Adam the survivor who fulfilled these instructions.

At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry he was tempted to accept the dominion of the earth but it would have been obtained illegitimately. It was only through his death (subsequent to Adam’s) that he could reclaim that dominion for humanity. Because of Adam’s disobedience God placed a prohibition order (that we cannot overturn) on humanity so that we would no longer be entitled to eternal life. Yet Adam, by God’s grace, still fulfilled the commands he was given before the fall. We are all survivors of a fallen world but by God’s grace we can succeed, even in the shadow of failure.

Even in Adam’s deathly winter God planted seeds of hope that would bud in the day of Jesus’ resurrection and will bear fruit in the everlasting kingdom of God, which we can enjoy if we accept his gift of life.