Reading: Romans 5:11-14
Reflective Thoughts
The cure
My grandmother was Pia Menatti Petruzzi. She came to the United States from a little Swiss/Italian village when she was 25 years old. She learned English, worked in a garment factory and lived in a tenement building in Jersey City. I’m told she had a heart for people-consequently, she regularly visited and cared for sick neighbors when no one else would. She contracted tuberculosis, and died in 1944-a few short months before the first antibiotic was successfully administered to a tuberculosis patient. The timing of the cure, for her, seems horribly unfair.
We each have our heartaches. In fact all of us were born with a deadly genetic disease of separation. Theologians call it “original sin.” It seems to affect every facet of who we are. Physical death is its most powerful mark-separating our bodies from our soul/spirit. It causes death in other more subtle ways that are equally devastating. It separates us from perfect community with God. It separates us from perfect community with each other. It even separates us from a kind of communion with ourselves (Jeremiah 17:9). Blame it on Adam if it seems horribly unfair to you, but none of us are any different from him-except for one thing: we were born in the time of the cure! Adam could only hope for the promise of it. We have received it.