Praying Together 22nd February 2026

So the commandment is a challenge. To love those who betray you. Those who jeer. Those who wield the whips embedded with flint, hammer in the nails, pierce your side.

Lent 1 2026

Collect

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may receive from you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Genesis 2: 15-17, 3: 1-7

15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’

3Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, “You shall not eat from any tree in the garden”?’ 2The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; 3but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.” ’ 4But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; 5for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,* knowing good and evil.’ 6So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. 7Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Reflection

If God didn’t want them to eat from the tree of Knowledge of good and evil, why did He put it there in the first place?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Good questions. In fact, the same question and the same answer. We recognise the qualities of things in terms of opposites. Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. A fierce Tyger and a meek and gentle lamb. Safe things and dangerous things. War and Peace. Why does a loving God allow the possibility of evil? Why not make sure everything is nice and safe all the time?

The answer is that He had to. If we are to appreciate the gentleness of a lamb, we need to know its opposite. If we are to understand what safety is, we need also to experience the possibility of danger. Peace means nothing if war doesn’t exist. If we are to know freedom, we need to know imprisonment. So, if there is to be ‘good’, the existence of ‘evil’ is inevitable.

If we don’t have the ability to choose between the two, we are just puppets with no free will, living in a Utopia we aren’t even aware of. God wants us to be human, with all that humanity entails, good and bad. And that means, painful as it was, He had to let Eve and Adam have the opportunity to decide. In a sense, the serpent was an instrument of God’s intention.

Eve and Adam chose to leave the Garden. They could have stayed. The serpent didn’t force them out – they were simply faced with having to make a moral decision, and they got it wrong. But at least they had that choice.

The ability to choose was a gift. But when they ate the poisoned fruit of human evil, God wasn’t about to desert them. His love extended to a second gift – forgiveness and redemption. It cost Him Himself, on the Cross. When we make choices, let His passion be our guide