Continuing this month’s theme, we draw further from the song Only a Holy God. Verse 2 says, “What other beauty demands such praises? What other splendor outshines the sun? What other majesty rules with justice? Only a holy God.”

Today, I pause to reflect upon the ancestor of all humankind, the man we know as Adam.

Like no other human ever quite has, Adam experienced the beauty and splendor of God before anything else and more clearly than others who have walked the earth after him. And then, after he was also first to feel the sting when facing God’s righteous personal punishment, he witnessed a sacrifice for his sin: the loss of an animal life so that he and his wife could have clothing to cover their shame and protect them from the coming harm of the environment outside of Eden.

Adam knew perfection and stunning beauty. And he knew miserable guilt and anguish.

Some would focus only on the legacy of fallen propensity he gave us in the latter. But today I also celebrate the hope he models for us in the former.

Adam didn’t lay down and immediately give up and die. Subtly, we can see how he clung to the hope of the promised One that would come. He lived out his centuries of life, working the land as God entrusted he should do, loving his wife — the helpmate God knew he would need, and helping to multiple the human population. And through the line of his descendants, that promised One came.

In Adam’s perseverance, we see a kind of generosity born out of regret and reflection. It is the generosity that says, “I am going to live my life doing the best I can because I have seen absolute goodness and I have been shown humbling mercy.”

And in his life, we see how the father of all reflects the Father of all who wants to show us the most true definition of generosity we will ever need to read.