Seed and Fruit

Father of all goodness and glory,

Praised are you for your infallible word. Not even the nonexistent can disobey your voice when you command into being what is not, by the word of your power. You have declared the end from the beginning, and in your great mercy you reveal to us even the deep mysteries of yourself by your holy scriptures. Grant me understanding of them, for I ask it in Christ.

What the light of nature glimmers, you illuminate in full brilliance: that you brought forth all “vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth” (Genesis 1:11). Adam’s first sin was complicity in his wife’s deception unto theft of your forbidden fruit. In this fruit was a seed. With knowledge of good and evil, were we not expected to replace the fruit we had stolen? Mankind has since been “fruitful,” multiplying, digging in its roots and spreading its branches wide.

Yet for all our produce, we have never given you back what we stole, never regrown the trust we felled. We have taken your pure and good creation and offered you rotting fruit in atonement. With contrast to the Spirit’s fruit are the acts of the flesh, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies” (Galatians 5:19-21). The like have been the fruit of my flesh as well. I have given myself to idolatry, prizing the opinions of men over your true word, sought sensuality as the supreme good and given full vent to my anger. Lord, forgive me.

Yet, was there a seed of redemption in woman? In the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, surely there was a seed according to its kind, as with all the fruit-bearing trees you made. Was it that seed in woman, which Eve ate, that you donned like a robe when you took on the likeness of sinful man to bear the fruit we never could? When Christ ate sour grapes on the cross, did you receive the wicked fruit of man at last that you may give us the good fruit you made?

“I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring [seed] and her offspring [seed]; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). At last, it is finished. Let us bear the fruit of those who house the spirit of Christ, the seed of Eve who crushes the seed of Satan, that we may taste the fruit of the tree of life at last.

Forgive my speculation, bridegroom of my soul, and let my brothers correct me if I have wandered into myth or error. Let my understanding image yours, Father. Let me hear your voice and know it, to see your word for what it is. Give me a grateful heart. Only you have what I ask. Glory to your name.