You’ll have to pardon me while I cough my way through this entry, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to reminisce about the things we inherit from our families. As the recipient of the germ that causes acute bronchitis (thank you WebMD for that diagnosis) I have been sloughing my way through this week in a fog that rivals San Francisco Bay. While I’m grateful that I don’t have the discomfort that comes with a sinus infection, which is my normal disease of choice this time of the year, I’m not exactly thrilled to be hacking up everything but my lung, although that may come later. Judging from the other patrons in the Mudhouse Coffeehouse here in downtown Springfield, it sounds like I’m not alone in sharing some kind of illness as faint coughs and sneezes echo through the long narrow building, which by the way is very cool-the building, not the sneezes and coughs.

I’m also not alone in getting the dreaded disease bronchitis as my mother is an annual victim of it’s gut/chest/whole body wrenching effect. In fact, I’ve begun to wonder if I’ve inherited her disposition towards bronchitis? Somehow in the passing on of her DNA to me, I got the gene that makes me susceptible to the bronchitis bug. Now I don’t really believe that she did that, though I don’t any proof to back it up one way or another because I tuned out of my 9th grade Life Sciences class where we likely we went over stuff like that. However, I do know that in getting our parent’s DNA we do inherit things like hair color, eye color, personality, aptitudes and maybe a few other notable things. Most of the stuff my parents passed on to me I’m really happy about and some of the stuff that they didn’t pass on to me I’m even more happy about – strong stomach being one of them (I have a 15 year vomit-free streak going right now!!). Of course there are some things that my parents passed on to me that I’d just as soon they not have, and try as I might, I can’t undo those things. They are a part of who I am. This is true of all of us, but I’m speaking now on a more cosmic level here as my parents passed on to me something dreadful and unavoidable – the sinful nature they inherited from their parents, which they got from their parents, and so on all the way back to Adam and Eve, who were our first parents. It is the inescapable and intractable desire and bent towards being our own God, which they exercised in the paradise they were born into…the Garden of Eden. How miserable we all are because of their one act of disobedience in that Garden…relationships broken and severed, work that is more burdensome than joyful, illnesses that end in death…all of these things and more are true because of the sin we inherited from our first parents and now perpetuate on a daily basis. How sad! How tragic! How hopeless! … Well, not quite.

God as gracious judge, made a cosmic promise to Adam and Eve that one of their offspring would do what they were unable to do, namely defeating once and for all the presence, power, and penalty of sin in their lives and the lives of their offspring who would place their hope and trust in Him. Of course there was a cost associated with this provision…a cost greater than any of us could fathom or stomach. For God to fulfill his promise to Adam and Eve and to us, it required the death of His Son. What love! What mercy! What grace! But God didn’t let Jesus stay dead…He raised Him – and not because he loved him – but because the promise to us wasn’t just about doing away with sin and our guilt but doing away with death and our shame…forever. The gospel of God’s grace is the gift of real life…a life in which we flourish in every possible way…a life in which we perfectly delight in God. May God continue to stir up our wonder as we know the reality of God’s grace in Christ more and more!