Show Don't Tell: Genesis 4:1-8

Instead of saying "Cain killed Abel out of jealousy," trace the slow burn. Watch Eve hold her firstborn—"I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord"—hope and pain mingling. Two boys grow: Cain's hands calloused from working soil that fights him, Abel's clothes smelling of sheep and lanolin. Offering day. Two altars. Cain arranges vegetables, fruit, grain—the hard-won yield of resistant ground. Abel selects his best lamb, its wool still warm, and slaughters it himself. The smoke rises. Feel Cain watching his offering go unregarded while Abel's fire burns brighter. Watch his face fall, jaw tighten. God warns him: "Sin is crouching at your door." Picture it—a predator, patient and hungry, waiting just outside. But Cain opens the door anyway. "Let's go out to the field," he says. And in that field, under an open sky, the first fist falls. Blood soaks into ground for the first time.