Tempted

 . . . He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted . . . 

 - From Mark 1

Not enough is made, of the parallels between Adam and Christ. Jesus is called "The Second Adam," which should set off volumes of Bible and Sunday School studies, for all ages, to compare and contrast the two.

Adam represented us. But, so did Jesus. They both had equivalent roles to play, both in world history, and in the lives of every individual man or woman, that ever lived.

They both were tempted. When we read of the temptation of Christ, in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights, we can imagine the conversation between Him and the Adversary, being the same as the conversation between Adam and the Serpent.

The Tempter offers us things that we would like. His goods look good. They would make us feel better. We would be successful . . . we'd have more money . . . more food . . . a bigger house.

We would have our needs fulfilled. We would have the best health care; a livable wage . . . we wouldn't have to work . . . we wouldn't have to worry about money.

We would be safe.

But as we would find . . . we would also be alone. We would be marginalized. We would not know how sad we are because we have learned to live without highs and lows.

Satan flattens life's "normal curve":  the peaks and valleys, the sadness and joy, the ups and downs . . . these all go away. 

We'd be so good at cheating death, that we would forget how to live. We would forget that life is a wonderful thing, to be lived at its fullest.

We would turn away from what God offers: to have abundant, and buoyant experiences, to thumb our noses at Death.

We are tempted to take Satan's option, of no feelings . . . because people that can feel, can feel pain. The Tempter lures us into a trap, where pain is gone. But so is joy.

Pastor Matt Hook once described eternity, for the lost, as "never-ending loneliness."

Humanity was made for community. No matter how bad things get . . . at least we would always have each other. The biggest temptation of all . . . the biggest feather in Satan's cap, is how to get us away from each other; how to hide us away; how to get us to run away, as Adam and Eve did; how to turn isolation away from being a curse, to being our only option.

You gotta give Satan some credit. He really is a crafty fellow.