@FirstChurchofJerusalem
Today's Early Church Wisdom
“I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people, I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elders—what Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
~ Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD) From the Preface to his lost ‘Expositions of the Sayings of the Lord’
This week's Psalm is Psalm 31 'My Rock, My Shield, My Song'

The Loss Of Perfect Good

Separation from God is not just the loss of close relationship with the Supreme Being, but a separation from all that is perfectly good. When the first people sinned, God did not just turn away from them and leaven them in Eden to get on with life alone. He moved them out, into an alien environment, where they had to toil to survive. ‘Why would He do that?’ you may ask. Is that a loving thing to do? The account in Genesis gives us the answer. God did it to stop them getting access to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24) because He knew that if, having become dead in sin, they were now to eat of the fruit of the tree of life, they would live forever in their sin, trapped in misery for all time without any hope of redemption! Of course, God banished them from the garden. He banished them because He loved them, and because He loved them, He had already made a plan to rescue them.