15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.” — Genesis 3:15 (ESV)

There is a promise made in Genesis that keeps Adam and Eve looking forward. They will never see the promise fulfilled themselves, but their children and the generations to come will eventually see the end result.

However, Genesis 3:15 isn’t directed at Adam, nor Eve, but to the serpent. And, God uses the word, “enmity” or strife as something that is placed there for the serpent to struggle with against the woman and her offspring. The offspring that will lead to the promise of sin being rectified forever.

The serpent will never fully win against God’s most prized creation but will, for generations, try to frustrate and condemn the people of God. The promise is made that there will be an end to all of this pain.

Temptation and sin permeate God’s people as they expand and try to figure out what it looks like to be God’s people. But the devil and his ways keep pressing in, trying to deceive and distort God’s love for his prized possession. He uses slaveries and exiles to put pressure on them to disbelieve God’s promise, and uses their own sin as a way to tempt them away from the love of God. But God keeps his promise.

Romans 5:6 tells us that while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly…

At the right time, the promise arrives! Jesus is born and is eventually led to a cross where his heel is bruised and he dies. But by his own resurrection-power, he crushes the head of the lying serpent, declaring that the promise is fulfilled! Putting meaning to hope and longing for the people of God, where they can finally be his people and he  can be their God.

This Advent season, fix your eyes on our faithful God who has kept all of his promises in Jesus Christ.

Let this Advent week be an offering of worship to you,
our promise-keeping God.
Yahweh, the Covenant LORD, I Am Who I Am.
You are abundantly faithful and steadfast.

And yet, even as you assure us, O Lord, we must repent:
we don’t trust You to fulfill your promises.
The world preaches that we make our own promises come true, and, sadly, we often buy it.

In our impatience we misplace our hope.
In our waiting on you, we settle for what we think is
the next best thing—often something that hurts us.
In our attempts to tarry and abide,
we craft the answers we want to hear,
or lose hope that we’ll hear anything at all.

Worse yet, we doubt your covenant love.

What a marvelous grace it is that your promise-keeping doesn’t hinge on our belief!

The promises of old are fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah.
Like boats on the shores of Normandy,
Christmas declares war on darkness.
The head of the serpent will be crushed by the King.

The splintery wood of the Savior’s manger gives way to the beams of his cross, and, on it, our blood-bought redemption.
A feeding trough built for barn animals,
repurposed to shelter the Paschal Lamb.

Show us how to live as your people, Good Father.
Let our celebration of this Advent season
teach the watching world about you.
May we never forget that from the beginning,
the Christ Child was destined not for Bethlehem but for Golgotha.

Make whole again what has been broken, O God. Let all creation wait with baited breath for the fulfillment of your promise to make all things new. Christmas is, after all, the beginning of
the end of all pain.