The Advent of Redemption

The summer I turned 13, I got talked into pulling an all-nighter—which completely wrecked my sleep schedule for weeks. The silver lining? Late-night TV in the ’90s had so many great old shows. That’s where I discovered classics like Car 54 Where Are You?, Taxi, and The Twilight Zone.

One episode featured a small-time crook named Rocky who gets taken down in a shootout. He wakes up to find a man named Pip standing over him—calm, smiling, and apparently ready to give Rocky whatever his heart desires.

Money? “Done,” says Pip.
Women? “How many?”
Gambling? “Pick a game.”
Food? “Just say the word.”

Rocky keeps insisting there must be some mistake. “I’m no good,” he says. “I don’t belong in a place like this.” But Pip assures him there’s no mistake at all—he’s exactly where he’s meant to be.

So Rocky shrugs off his confusion and throws himself into it: the gambling, the gluttony, the girls. Everything he reaches for is his. Every desire met. Every wish granted. He cannot lose.

And that’s the problem.

Why? We’ll come back to that at the end of the sermon. For now, let’s put Rocky—and The Twilight Zone—in our pocket, and turn to Genesis chapter 3, starting in verse 1.

Genesis 3:1-15

3:1 Now 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’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but 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.’ ”

4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 So 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.

7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”

14 The Lord God said to the serpent,
“Because you have done this,
cursed are you among all animals
and among all wild creatures;
upon your belly you shall go,
and dust you shall eat
all the days of your life.
15 I will put enmity between you and the woman
and between your offspring and hers;
he will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

Prayer

Father, thank You for Your Word.
From the very beginning You’ve told the truth about us and the truth about Yourself. Even in the moment of our fall, You were already speaking redemption.

As we open this passage, would You open us?
Open our minds to understand, our hearts to receive, and our wills to obey.

Holy Spirit, point us to Jesus—the promised Redeemer, the One who took the wound and crushed the serpent’s head. Clear away distraction and speak to each person here.

We ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.

Preamble

The more observant among you will notice we’ve stepped out of Ephesians today. We’re beginning our Advent series—a time the church sets aside to prepare our hearts for the hope, peace, joy, and love that Christ brings.

We often go straight to the Gospels when we think about Advent, and that makes sense—they record Jesus’ birth. But Advent is bigger than a story about a manger. It’s about readiness, anticipation, and fixing our eyes on the coming of our King.

And all of Scripture points us that way. From beginning to end, the Bible keeps nudging us toward Christ—His arrival, His work, and what it means for us now.

So today we’re starting in Genesis. Because from the moment humanity fell, God spoke of redemption—of a Deliverer who would come through the woman’s offspring.

As always, we’ll move through the passage verse by verse and listen for what God has for us. Let’s dive into verse one.

Verse 1

3:1 Now 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’?”

Fair warning—today we’re going to challenge some long-held assumptions, so let’s simply ask what the text actually says.

The first assumption is that the serpent was a supernatural villain and that “crafty” means evil. It doesn’t. The Hebrew word is used often in Proverbs to describe the kind of prudence and shrewdness we’re supposed to cultivate. The serpent was known among creation as sharp and strategic.

Like the Raptors in Jurassic Park.

No, I’m not saying it was an apex predator in Eden. But think of the Raptors’ intelligence—how they learned, coordinated, and caused serious damage when their abilities were aimed the wrong way. That’s the idea here: a good capacity can be turned toward a destructive purpose.

God gives His creatures real abilities—good gifts meant for good use—but He doesn’t force those gifts to stay good. They can be twisted. Samson is a perfect example: great strength, great potential, great disaster when the heart behind it turned inward.

That’s exactly what the serpent does. It subtly reframes God as restrictive instead of generous. A tiny distortion, hiding behind the posture of, “I’m just asking questions.”

And that raises a critical issue for question-askers like me:

Why am I asking the question?

To pursue truth?
Or to adjust Scripture so it fits my preferences?

Here’s the rule of thumb:

If I don’t like the conclusion I reach, will I still submit to it?

With that in mind, watch how Eve responds to this distortion.

Verses 2-3

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but 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.’ ”

Some teachers will argue that Eve’s response here alters God’s command—that she adds a rule or misquotes Him. A few even suggest her reply is the first sin in the Bible.

But when I slow down and actually look at the text, I don’t see that.
I don’t see deception or rebellion in Eve’s voice.
I see sincerity.
I see a woman correcting the serpent with what she genuinely believes God has said.

So let’s gently examine the assumption behind the “Eve misquoted God” view and then walk through some details that give us reason to pause before accepting it.

The argument usually goes like this:
In Genesis 2, when God gives the command, He says nothing about touching the tree. Let’s hear it again:

“You may freely eat of every tree… but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat…”

It’s true: no mention of touch. So when she later says, “We must not eat it or touch it,” how do we understand that?

Again, traditionally, people have suggested one of three explanations:

She added a rule.
She misremembered.
She lied.

Those are the standard options. But none of them are required by the text.

Let me offer a simpler and more textually faithful reading.

1. Genesis never claims to record every word God spoke.

Nothing in Genesis 2 says, “This is the full script of all divine instructions.”
Genesis 1–3 gives us select moments to move the story, not a complete record.

And here’s the detail that’s often skipped: The only direct command to Eve we have on record is in Genesis 1:29—and that command contains no restrictions at all. Only permission.

She hears:

“Every tree… you may have for food.”

No exception named. No prohibition mentioned to her. Yet in chapter 3 she clearly knows:

there is a forbidden tree,
it carries a consequence,
and it must not even be touched.

So one of two things is true:

Either God told both humans more than Genesis 2 reports,
or God clarified this directly to Eve later.

Either way—the text itself shows she learned this command from somewhere true.

This makes the “she added a rule” assumption unnecessary.

2. If she were wrong, the serpent would have pounced.

If Eve actually misquoted God, this would be the perfect moment for the serpent to exploit it.

He could say: “God never said that”, or“You misunderstood Him”, or “You’re overreacting.” But the serpent doesn’t challenge her statement at all. Not a word. That silence is meaningful.

And nowhere—anywhere—in Scripture does God, Moses, Paul, or any author correct Eve’s words.

The charge that Eve misquoted God shows up later—in tradition—not in the Bible.

3. The “Eve lied” interpretation breaks the whole doctrine of the Fall.

If Eve invented a command God never gave, then the first sin happened before the serpent’s temptation. Before the fruit. Before the fall. Before Adam. That contradicts the entire biblical storyline, including Paul’s teaching in Romans 5.

Eve-as-liar creates more theological problems than it solves. It must be rejected.

4. So what makes the best sense of the text?

When we take the text at face value:

Eve knows a prohibition we have not yet heard recorded.
Eve clearly knows the consequence.
Adam is standing beside her.
The serpent does not challenge her summary.
Scripture never rebukes her words.

The simplest reading—the one that avoids speculation—is this:

Eve accurately repeated what she understood God to have commanded. She spoke truthfully. And she used God’s instruction to resist the serpent—at least at first.

She didn’t add, invent, or distort a thing.

Besides, I honestly believe that one we see that clearly, the tragedy of what comes next lands even harder.

Let’s keep reading.

Verses 4-5

4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

And here in verses 4 and 5, we finally reach the serpent’s first outright lie. Not a twist. Not a half-truth. A direct denial of what God has said. And notice what that lie targets: the consequence.

We all know how life works—cause and effect, action and reaction. Choices have outcomes. Some joyful, some painful. But our culture works overtime to separate choices from consequences: “Follow your truth.” “Take the shortcut.” “It won’t cost you.” The promise of the world is essentially:

“You will not surely die.”

But eventually the bill comes due. Guilt catches up. Loneliness creeps in. And the lie we believed collapses under its own weight.

Because nothing is consequence-free.
Our next step is leading us somewhere.
And every lie carries a promise we need to pause and examine.

Look again at the serpent’s pitch:

Your eyes will be opened
You will be like God
You will know good and evil

It’s the same pattern John warns us about:

The lust of the eyes
The lust of the flesh
The pride of life

The lie is always the same: “You can have it all. You can take what you want. You can build a world around you.” And that path always leads inward—into the self—and inward is where we get lost.

Think about our cultural moment. We are the most therapized, emotionally literate generation in history. More counseling, more vocabulary, more encouragement to “work on ourselves” than any society before us. Yet:

Depression among teens and young adults is three to ten times higher than in their grandparents’ day.
Loneliness is so widespread it’s now called a public-health epidemic.

How does that happen?

Because when everything says, “Turn inward—your truth, your healing, your journey.” When we look inside ourselves we see why? Sin, shame, brokenness and death! And staring at that stuff too long bends the soul out of shape.

This is why God calls us to lift our eyes:

First Upward toward Him—pure, steady, true.
Then Outward toward others—where love and service pull us out of ourselves.

When our eyes are on Christ, we walk in light. When our energy is poured into others, we flourish in the gifts God has given us.

But tragically, Eve gets pulled inward—pulled into Eve—and the consequences follow.

Let’s keep reading.

Verse 6

6 So 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.

It’s like watching a car wreck in slow motion—the fall of humanity unfolding in a single verse. So ordinary. So simple. We didn’t fall like warriors in battle but like dominos tipped by a gentle breeze. The heartbreaking part is how unremarkable it all looks.

It’s worth pointing out that the classic categories of temptation are present here again, but let’s slow down and actually look more closely at what Eve actually wants:

Food.
Beauty.
Wisdom.

None of those are bad things. In fact, all three are gifts God Himself designed us to desire.

Food is good.
Beauty is good.
Wisdom is good.

So the problem is not the desire—it’s the direction. The serpent takes good desires and twists them just enough to be deadly. And this is where everything turns, because:

Desire without discernment is disaster.

A good longing becomes a spiritual trap the moment it’s pursued apart from God’s command. That’s why sincerity alone can’t rescue this moment. Uzzah meant well when he reached out to steady the Ark in 2 Samuel 6—but, tragically, his intentions didn’t make the disobedience harmless. Motives do matter… but obedience matters more.

And then we hit the line that hangs over the whole passage:

“and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.”

Adam was there.
The whole time.
Silent. Passive. Watching.

Genesis doesn’t tell us what he was thinking—and I always prefer not to speculate what someone’s motivation is—but it does show us what happened:
Eve fell, and half the one-flesh union collapsed. Adam followed, and the other half fell with her.

In a single shared act, the unity God designed was also corrupted with sin.

And here’s the sobering part:
most spiritual collapses don’t begin with dramatic rebellion—they begin with quiet agreement. With silence. With two people drifting together instead of calling one another back to what God said.

They took a bet that could never pay off. They played stupid games… and are about to win stupid prizes.

Let’s keep reading.

Verse 7

7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

Adam and Eve do get what the serpent promised. Their eyes are opened. They now “know good and evil.” And in that sense, they have become “like God.”
But they do not enjoy their prize.

Instead of delight, they feel exposure.
Instead of freedom, they feel fear.
Instead of closeness, they feel distance.

Suddenly they’re insecure around each other. They hide. They feel shame for the first time. A fracture has opened inside them—something neither is equipped to manage.

When I talk to young pastors, I often tell them: you don’t actually want to know everything. Peter urges us to shepherd the flock among us—to stay faithful to the people and responsibilities God has actually placed in our care. Why? Because knowledge is only “power” for manipulators and string-pullers. For a true Biblical leader knowledge is accountability and responsibility.

The more you know, the more God will hold you responsible for.
And part of what God was sparing Adam and Eve from was not awareness, but the weight that comes with it.

We think we want more—more influence, more opportunity, more experience. But contentment finds joy in the assignment God has already given. By all means: Let Him lead you into something new, but pray it in. Don’t move until He nudges you forward, and stop the moment He places a check in your spirit.

Embrace where God has you. Make the most of it. Jesus said that those who are faithful with little will be trusted with more.

Calvary Chapel is a great example. A movement of hundreds of churches around the world began with Pastor Chuck Smith—who only wanted a congregation of about two hundred. That’s it. And God honored a man who was content to be faithful.

Because eventually each of us stands before our Creator. And His question is not, “How much did you build?” but, “Were you faithful with what I entrusted to you?”

Adam and Eve are about to face that moment themselves. Let’s keep reading.

Verse 8

8 They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

This verse is actually fascinating, because there’s more happening here than we see at first glance.

The phrase our English Bibles render as “the evening breeze” or “the cool of the day” comes from a Hebrew expression that literally reads, “the wind of the day.” Translators choose “evening breeze” because it’s the smoothest English equivalent without drifting from translation to interpretation, but there is room in these words for a more textured understanding.

Throughout the Old Testament, wind—ruach—is often tied to God’s activity: His breath, His Spirit, His life-giving presence. Now, Genesis 3:8 isn’t explicitly saying, “the Spirit of the LORD arrived,” so neither am I. But the language nonetheless carries a rich resonance and rhythm.

Unless Eden had a daily breeze on a strict celestial schedule—which we have no reason to assume—this is likely describing God’s customary time of meeting with His people.
A daily appointment.
A rhythm of fellowship.
A familiar moment in which Adam and Eve expected the presence of God.

And honestly, that should comfort us.

God knows everything.
Sees everything.
Is present everywhere.

Nothing in Genesis 3 surprised Him—not the serpent’s approach, not the deception, not the bite, not the hiding. He knew when, where, and how it would happen, and the plan of redemption was already in motion before the fruit ever touched their lips.

So why is that comforting?

Because God does not rush in frantically.
He doesn’t panic.
He doesn’t storm into the garden in a rage the moment the sin occurs.

He arrives at the appointed time—just as He always had.

God is active, but He is not reactive.
He doesn’t need a plan B.
He is steady, dependable—like a rock.

And the same is true in our lives, church.
We have blown it before, and we will blow it again, but God will not recoil as though we finally crossed some hidden line. He already knew. He knew before we did. And He loves us still. Remember: He never broken fellowship with Judas—a man Jesus Himself recruited—even though Judas would betray him to death!

But—and this is crucial—love doesn’t mean indulgence.
True love doesn’t leave us wallowing in our deadly desires.
True love means accountability.
True love means rescue.

And in the next section we see that God stepped into the garden not to destroy Adam and Eve, but to restore, to confront in love, and to begin the long work of redemption.

Let’s keep reading.

Verses 9-11

9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

We read, “The Lord God called to the man…”

But the Hebrew uses ha-adam—the human, not the man as an individual. It’s the same word the author later uses for male and female together when it says God “called them adam” in Genesis 5:1-2.

If the author wanted “the man,” he had the word ’ish available.
He doesn’t use it here.

That matters, because some interpreters have built an entire structure of spiritual hierarchy on this moment—God calling the man first. But I am firmly convinced the text indicates that God is addressing His human creatures as one unit, the way He formed them:

Both bear His image.
Both received His blessing.
Both are accountable before Him.

And we need to sit with that for a moment.

If we imagine a world where the man answers for the woman, we end up with a strange picture: half of God’s image-bearers apparently do not stand before Him in full moral responsibility. But Scripture never paints that world. Over and over, women are addressed, confronted, commissioned, guided, rebuked, and blessed by God Himself. They do not come to Him through their husbands; they come to Him as His people.

So here, when God calls “Where are you?”—
He is not summoning one spouse while the other waits in the background.
He is summoning His humans.
Both of them.

And notice the tone. These aren’t investigative questions. God already knows what happened. He isn’t gathering evidence— He is inviting confession.

And this is where the scene feels awfully familiar.

When my son Teddy was about two years old, I came downstairs and saw a trail of neon-orange Cheeto dust leading behind our kitchen island. I followed it and found him sitting in the middle of a bright orange crime scene, crumbs everywhere, face glowing like a traffic cone, empty bag beside him.

I said, “Teddy, did you eat the Cheetos?”

And with Cheeto mulch stuck between his teeth, he shook his head and said, “No.!”

That’s Adam and Eve. That’s us.

Trying to deny sin while it’s still stuck on our face. Talking to God as if He’s as easily fooled as we are.

But He isn’t. We cannot lie to God, only to ourselves.

The only question now is: Will Adam and Eve step forward in honesty—or insist they didn’t eat the Cheetos?

Let’s keep reading.

Verses 12-13

12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent tricked me, and I ate.”

What comes next is not confession—it’s evasion.
Adam and Eve both speak, but neither tells the truth about themselves.

Adam points first at Eve… and then, astonishingly, at God:

“The woman You put here with me…”

In one breath he manages to fault the gift and the Giver.
As if to say, “If You had arranged my life differently, none of this would have happened.”

Then God turns to Eve, and she follows the same pattern:

“The serpent deceived me…”

In other words:
“If the circumstances had been different, I’d be innocent.”

Different culprits, same instinct.
And this is the part of the story where we stop being observers and start seeing ourselves.

We don’t like accountability.
We don’t like hard conversations.
We don’t like the discomfort of saying, “I was wrong.”

So we do what they do. We deflect:

the influence we listened to,
the friend who failed us,
the pressure we were under,
even God Himself—
any direction but inward.

But if Genesis shows us anything here, it’s that deflection never heals anything. It only keeps us stuck.

And so here’s a simple, practical alternative—one that builds trust instead of hollowing it out. When someone comes to challenge you on a hurt you’ve caused or sin you’ve committed:

Thank them for caring enough to come to you directly.
Own your part—without excuses, without spin.
Ask them to pray for you, not as a performance, but in humility.

Those three steps do more for relationships than a dozen explanations and excuses ever could. They open the door to forgiveness, maturity, and restoration. Because trust is rebuilt with honesty and transparency.

Adam and Eve choose the opposite—and the fracture deepens.

But God is not finished with them. His response is not vindictive; it is redemptive. The consequences He is about to give form the very foundation of His promise to send a Redeemer.

Let’s move to verses 14–15.

Verses 14-15

This section is the serpent’s curse, and the language would have been immediately familiar to ancient Israel: “Crawling on your belly” and “eating dust” weren’t zoology lessons—they were idioms for total defeat. God is declaring that evil’s downfall is already certain.

But in the middle of this curse, something astonishing happens.
Right here—at the very moment humanity breaks—God speaks the very first hint of Christmas.

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers…”

Enmity isn’t hatred in the human sense; it’s cosmic opposition. God Himself will take the field against the serpent, He is declaring spiritual war. And He will raise up deliverers until the final Deliverer comes.

You see this pattern through Scripture:

Pharaoh rises — God raises Moses.
Canaanite kings rise — God raises Joshua.
Goliath rises — God raises David.
Haman rises — God raises Esther and Mordecai.

Again and again, darkness surges and God sends a light.

But it all narrows to one promise:

“He will strike your head, and you will strike His heel.”

A wounded heel is a real wound. But a crushed head is a final blow.

On the cross Satan did his worst — sin, shame, guilt, death itself.
The heel was indeed bruised. The suffering was real. The death was real.

But three days later Jesus walked out of the grave.
And when He did, the promise of Genesis 3:15 exploded into history:

The head was crushed! Satan, sin, death, demons, the grave, and hell have no claim anymore.

That is the heartbeat of Advent:
our Redeemer stepping into our ruin, taking the wound we earned, and conquering the enemy we could never defeat. And in this way Jesus restored what was broken in Eden.

Now… with that promise ringing in our ears let’s pull Rocky and the Twilight Zone back out of our pocket.

Conclusion – Rocky, Advent, and the Call of God

Rocky gets everything he ever wanted.
Every desire met.
Every wish granted.
No losses. No limits. No consequences.

And for a while, he thinks it’s heaven.

But the longer he lives in that world, the more hollow it feels.

He wins every game — but winning becomes meaningless.
He indulges every appetite — but nothing satisfies.
He lives inside a loop of desire without discernment, and it slowly becomes unbearable.

Finally, Rocky snaps:

“I can’t live like this. I wasn’t cut out for heaven. Send me to the other place.”

And Pip smiles and says:

“This is the other place.”

The twist isn’t that Rocky went to hell.
The twist is hell was getting everything he ever thought wanted.

And that is exactly what Genesis 3 shows us.

Eve wasn’t chasing something evil.
She was chasing good things, but they were things SHE wanted—and without God:

wisdom without trust
knowledge without obedience
desire without discernment

And the result wasn’t enlightenment — it was: shame, fear, hiding, distance, death.

And humanity has been replaying that pattern ever since.

“If I could just get that relationship…”
“If I could just fix this one thing about myself…”
“If I could just get that job, that income, that life…”

And sometimes we even get the thing we wanted… and it still leaves us restless. Because it was never meant to save us.

The deepest tragedy of the human story is not wanting something you never get. It’s getting everything you think you need… and discovering it cannot heal you.

Which is why the promise in Genesis 3:15 is such staggering mercy.

Right there—in the shadows of blame and hiding—God does not say,
“Fine. Live with the world you’ve created.”

He says, “A Child is coming. A Son is coming. He will step into your story, take the wound, and crush the serpent’s head.”

That is Advent. That is Christmas. That is the Gospel planted in the soil of Eden.

Jesus comes into a world that believed the lie:
“You will not surely die.
There won’t be consequences.
You can build your own heaven.”

And at the cross, He lets the serpent strike His heel — so He can strike the serpent’s head.

Because of Him:

Death may nip at your heels, but it doesn’t own your future.
Sin may tempt you, but it doesn’t define you.
The serpent may whisper, but he no longer gets the last word.

So here’s the question Advent asks every one of us:

Where are you?

Still hiding?
Still stitching fig leaves together?
Still chasing a version of “heaven” that’s starting to feel suspiciously like hell?

Or ready to step out of the trees and say:

“Lord, I’ve eaten the fruit.
I’ve believed the lie.
I need the Redeemer You promised.”

Church, would you stand with me?

Every eye closed.
Every head bowed.

If today you realize you’ve been chasing what cannot heal you…
If you’re tired of hiding…
If you’re ready to answer the God who still asks, “Where are you?”…
then pray with me:

“Lord Jesus, I come to You. I confess my sin and my need for You. I believe You died for me. I believe You rose again. I turn from my way, and I turn to You. Forgive me, cleanse me, make me new. I give You my life. Amen.”

If you prayed that prayer today, come talk to us after service.
We want to walk with you, pray with you, and help you take your next step of faith.

Church —
Don’t settle for the Twilight Zone
when Jesus is standing here with arms open wide.