July 12 Daily Devotional

Monthly Theme:

By God’s Word and Spirit the world was made, and he uses the same tools to rebuild the creaking cosmos. God does not save some souls from the wreckage of the planet; instead, the whole groaning creation must be delivered from bondage by the love and power of God.

Bible Reading:

Genesis 3:20–24

Bible Text:

So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken (Gen. 3:23).

Devotional:

Human attempts to regain paradise are noble, yet futile.

Those who believe that human life began in a cave, with a brute of a man and a maiden, think of paradise as the height of progress. Progress advances us from the cave to the castle, from poverty to paradise.

Those who believe human life started in God's garden tend to teach that the improvement of life requires a return to the beginning. They continually call people back to God, back to the Bible, back to the faith of the past.

Both groups have the same noble desire for improvement. Both are dissatisfied with our present predicament and are determined to discover or recover the goodness of our golden age.

Without God we cannot aspire to goodness. Therefore those who pin their hopes merely on technology and good intentions will never see paradise.

But the road to the future is more than a return to the past. Human history is more than a child's game that is finished when the sun sets. God entered our time through Jesus Christ, the Lord of history. Human inventions are divine gifts, and they will be decorations in God's coming kingdom. When the last fruit of Golgotha is harvested and the resurrection is complete, nothing will be wasted and all will be purified.

When God is finished with us, we'll have much more than paradise.

Andrew Kuyvenhoven's Daylight, a modern devotional classic, was originally published in 1994. This edition is copyright by Faith Alive Christian Resources, from whom may be ordered Daylight, the predecessor of Twilight.

A man of many accomplishments, Andrew Kuyvenhoven is probably best known for his contributions to Today (formerly The Family Altar), a widely-used monthly devotional booklet associated with the Back to God Hour. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations for this edition of Twilight are from the New International Version

Be sure to read the "Preface" and the "Acknowledgments" by the author.