"No regrets!" is a common refrain in high-school graduation speeches and wedding toasts.  While it's a nice thought, if we're honest we know that to live very long or deeply in this world is to experience regret, the painful feeling of having to live with a mistake that cannot be fixed.  Some actions, once done, cannot be undone.  Some words, once spoken, are irrevocable.  

I can only imagine the tremendous regret Adam and Eve experienced after making their fateful choice to eat the forbidden fruit.  Little did they realize the cosmic, far-reaching consequences of their choice.  Yet what they immediately experienced was painful enough -- guilt, shame, hiding, blaming each other, and expulsion from Eden.  

The question God asks Eve, "What is this you have done?," is one that asks her to speak the truth and accept responsibility for her actions.  But instead, she chooses to follow Adam's example of shifting the blame.  

In the curses that follow, we see the cosmic, trickle-down effect of our first parents' sin: a never-ending struggle between good and evil, pain in childbearing, strained relationships, work that is frustrating and backbreaking.

And yet even in the curse, there is mercy.  God clothes Adam and Eve with animal skins to replace their sorry fig leaves.  It seems some innocent animal had to die as a result of their sin.  Surely this points to the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.

In Romans 5:19 Paul writes, "For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the one man the many will be made righteous."  Through the first Adam, sin and death spread to all people, but through the last Adam, Jesus, the effects of the curse are reversed as we experience his forgiveness and new life.  He is the seed of the woman who will finally crush the serpent's head. (Genesis 3:15)

Although I would love to live a life with no regrets, I have come to see that this is rather impossible this side of heaven.  I have rather come to embrace Thoreau's maxim that "to regret deeply is to live afresh."  May we experience renewal and fresh strength this week as honestly face the pain of our past mistakes and embrace the forgiveness and healing of the Cross.