I hadn’t looked at this in a very long time but a friend found it quoted on a website so I thought I’d share it again here:

“Although our own pain is not always caused by our personal sin, sin, in a larger sense is the reason pain and disease entered Eden. Sin entered the world and altered it so completely that pain became a part of man’s everyday existence. (See Genesis 3) From Genesis 3 on the Bible’s central message is redemption. It is about how God chose not to wipe us out. It is about how a holy God who cannot tolerate sin made a way for us to be sinless.” —from Devotions for the Brokenhearted by Robin Prince Monroe (2006)