Own Your Curse: Week 1

Once Upon a Curse STUDY

This Bible Study series accompanies my new book Once Upon a Curse. Here in week one, we expose problems with the broken world outside and our dark desires on the inside. This is an introduction to the curses we meet in God’s creation story: the same curses that we have all struggled with from the beginning.

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I was told, as a little girl, that I could write my own story, and create my own life. To some extent, that may have been true. I made choices that directed my particular steps in one way or another. I have written my way into a unique experience that you do not have. You also have particular twists and turns on your own path that I will never know. But our story began before we did. We live in a world that was here before we were, and it will be here after we are gone.

God breathed life into dust. Filling raw lungs and heart and mind with the light of life. He created the very first person, and broke him in two. From a silver of a man’s side, He built another. Breath and heart and mind. They, both man and woman, were formed as His beautiful people, and He was their God, their Creator, the first Storyteller.

This story, this world, this reality, is a garden full of every kind of good thing. His people had every provision that they needed. Everything that they wanted. It was enough to sustain them forever. They had a Heavenly Father that was pleased with their word, action, and deeds. They were the most honored beings among His entire creation.

READ Genesis 1

What did God create?

READ Genesis 1:31

What did God say about His creation?

Yet, as the story goes, there was a single tree from which they were not allowed to take, not allowed to eat, not allowed to enjoy. A tree of knowledge. A fruit that would open their eyes to good and evil. This was the one thing that God kept from them. This was the taste that would close their eyes to God’s reality. And as the story unfolds, this wisdom is the one thing they ended up wanting the most.

READ Genesis 3:1-5

What did the serpent tell to man and woman?

In the cool misty garden, woman couldn’t stop looking at that sparkling fruit. Feeling the hunger welling up on the tip of her tongue, she thought, what would that taste like? That unknown fruit, that dangled between the leaves. And to enflame her curiosity, a word from the serpent sang her to consider sleep. Sun and fresh air, intoxicating freedom. One afternoon, she felt an inspiring whiff of unexplored possibility. The thought of it tingled, somewhere too deep to recognize. Built for exploration, creation, and movement. How could she just stay still. There was a whole world out there to experience To touch. To taste.

What if? Who said? What did God really say? Her own imaginative pen moved too quickly.