Thine advent here XII

I will keep this one short.  A great hike today (full report to come) that has left me extremely tired and anticipating soreness galore tomorrow.  Plenty to tell.  As for today's Advent thought, I am going to go way way back to the very first Christmas story.  Before Bethlehem even existed. Long before the first manger or crib.  Before the first birth, even, and it is actually a curse.  God says to the serpent after the fall:

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.

This is the great promise of God to be about the business of destroying the sin that destroyed us, that destroyed the order and harmony of our lives, that destroyed our ability to do good with good things instead of twisting them all into increasingly elaborate and re-named sins.  And, of course, God fulfilled this promise on that Christmas day we celebrate now.  He came to bring peace on the earth, good will t'ward men, but he came to do so by crushing sin.  Good stuff!