What better way to teach Kindergartners about the Fall than with a bag of Starbursts and a bag of Lindt chocolate truffles? We corralled our teachers and Dan Burden to help execute our lesson plan. Dan would bring in the candy and explain that it was only for the teachers. He would put the Starbursts on one side of the room, and the chocolate on the other, emphasizing only for the teachers and only the Starbursts. The teachers could eat any of the Starbucks, but none of the chocolates.

One-by-one, the teachers would come up, fuss over the Starbursts, and reject them in favor of the chocolate. But shouldn’t one of us do what Dan said and not take the chocolate, a teacher asked. Well, no, not really. We all are sinners. The main verse we were studying was Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

I know you know where this is headed. I went first and checked out the Starbursts, but kept looking over at the chocolate. I really love chocolate I told the kids and walked across the room. I was about to open the bag—and we didn’t see this coming—Riley jumped up from her chair and shouted, “No, Mrs. Triggs, no. Don’t take the chocolate.” Sadly, the other teachers, one by one, took their turn, each of us falling to the lure of the forbidden truffle as other children joined Riley in shouting "No, don't eat it."

Riley should have been in the garden with Eve.

Nowadays, even in this post-Christian world, there is nothing original about sin. We all do it, and if we look closely enough, our response to sin resembles our first parents’ response—we doubt God’s Word and goodness, we blame, we deny, we twist things ever so slightly to justify and make ourselves look better than we are. We aren’t even original thinkers in our excuse-making. We will live and not die. We will know more fully.

English poet John Donne wrote these lines in his Holy Sonnet I
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour I can myself sustain;

An hour? Don’t I wish. There are some days I can’t even sustain myself on the 10-minute drive to work without complaining about road construction and school buses. That old subtle foe of ours sneaks in a worry here and there, a doubt or two of God’s goodness in a difficult situation and a large dose of self-pity because life isn’t going my way.

The final lines of Donne’s sonnet bring hope to my lack of sustainability:
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

In his book The Soul in Paraphrase – A Treasury of Classic Devotional Poem, Leland Ryken comments on this first sonnet, defining the word adamant as "magnetic lodestone," a rare magnetic mineral that occurs in nature. The magnetism is permanent and cannot be undone.

When God reaches out to his beloved through his nail-scarred resurrected hands, his bride clings to him like metal to a magnet. They are together. The serpent’s head is crushed.

Nothing can pry us away. There’s nothing subtle about God’s amazing grace that draws cold iron hearts to his loving heart, rescues us from our not so original sins and sustains us as we walk with him.

By the way, Riley’s favorite hymn is “Holy, Holy, Holy,” I think that girl is on to something.

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity!

Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,
casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.

Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee,
though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
perfect in power, in love and purity.

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth and sky and sea.
Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
God in three persons, blessed Trinity.