So many ask the burning question

How can a good God in heaven

Permit evil with its pain and dark tension

Why are brokenness, evil, grief, and sin

Permitted to abound; even to a victorious win?

It begins with a story of ages past

It’s plot and setting unparalleled and never surpassed

It’s scope and depth superior and vast

To answer the question, a story must be told

A story more precious than that of purest gold

It begins before the existence of man

When darkness was all, God did begin to plan

With an explosion of light, into existence all things did fan.

With naught but a word

Land, plant, animal, and man did populate the earth

In an epic display of majesty and light

Creation was spectacular upon first sight!

A tapestry of Gods limitless might!

Created for His glory

Man entered into an intimate love story

To know and be know by God

Was the purpose for which man did walk earthly sod

To be tied heart and soul, as through eternal days we did trod

But alas a greater plan still was in the works

And evil was set free with sinister smirks

Man took the fruit and greedily ate

Falling prey to devilish servants bate

Breaking from God and sealing our fate

No more walks with God in the evening cool

Rather covering, hiding, playing him as a fool

Creation’s glorious light plunged into darkness

What once was whole, now shattered brokenness

The future shrouded in dismal bleakness

Rejected from their custom designed home

To the wilderness beyond, now to roam

Oppression descends, man shackled as sin does accost

The righteous and just line irreversiblely crossed

And yet, hope is not all lost

The bumbling action was not unexpected

It’s entrance and sinister presence was always intended

A divine, eternal plan is in the unfolding

Unbelievably intricate in its telling

Irresistible and designed for sharing

A story so incredible it has to be true

Or else it is the rambling insanities that mad men do

Man’s choice was the ultimate rejection

Rebellion amounting to divine insurrection

Incurring a guilty verdict even from the great skeptics inspection

But where created man did fail

Divine, eternal God would prevail

In an epic display of holy grace

That would reveal His righteous ways

And produce worship through all eternity’s long days

A prophecy was declared

Man’s sin would be reversed sending hope of being spared

One would come whose sinless state

Would forever alter our bleak fate

Healing the offense incurred in the fruit we ate

Jesus, you came in humility low

Infinite love and justice to show

In your body on that tree

You bore divine wrath for all to see

Satisfying justice to set me free

When in faith I look up

I see a Savior drinking from divine wrath’s cup

The cost of my sin bellows its cry

As I arch my back howling to the sky

Sin’s immense pain so clear in my eye

Grief wells up within me

The darkness of my sin I clearly see

Head in hands, resting upon one knee

Heart and mouth confess faith in the man on the tree

Repentance healing my heart wholly and completely

Such divine love and mercy!

Such grace to prompt death’s dark journey!

Such joy in death and sin’s defeat!

Incredible wonder that mercy and wrath did meet!

Justice is satisfied for the righteous King sitting on His mercy seat

Forgiven, restored, adopted, and sealed am I

A child of the King reigning on high!

From condemned, rebellious sinner

To one who is more than a victor

Obtaining a honored seat at His table for dinner

From an alienated rebel and deviant

To an adopted son of the King radiant

My sin has been reversed and erased

Through a Savior’s blood displaced

Spilled for me; now eternally graced

What a story for the ages

Eternally invoking the redeemed ones praises!

The grand story of redemption and grace

Necessitated the fall of man in those former days

Yet hope now exits and will forever be the object of praise!

So, why must sin, evil, and pain exist

Because without it, all of God’s goodness would be missed

Mercy, grace, love, justice, righteousness, and holiness would be veiled

Had man not disobeyed and failed

For the ultimate goodness of God is seen in a man, a god who to a tree was nailed

Without sin we would never see, nor be satisfied

In a God who through sin would be gloriously magnified!

The entrance of sin was a necessity

To reveal the divine King’s glorious good and complexity

But take heart, for the devastation sin caused has been reversed successfully

With eyes of faith we see and embrace

Forever delighting in the splendor of his eternal face!