Father, help us to be part of your promise, following your son for your glory.
Just what is a promise? It is something along the lines of 'a declaration assuring that one will or will not do something'. I can 't find many promises made by God while Adam was in Eden, but we have to remember that God never lies, so his word is always a promise. Everything he says He will do, He does.
The other thing to remember is that promises aren't always nice. And the promise made to Adam after his sin was that he would die. And this is exactly what happens to everyone sooner or later; we all die - "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." We can't blame Adam. Adam might have been first one to sin, but we all sin and therefore we all will die.
And that's what happens when we die. Our bodies return to the earth, in burial. They return to dust.
But that's not the end of the story.
The other 'promise' was that the seed would bruise the serpent's head. What does this mean?
Simply that a descendant of Adam, in this case Jesus Christ, would rise above sin and temptation. And to such an extent that he would damage it to the point of destruction. And while he would die, he would not return to dust, but would rise from the dead again.
It is also signifies that he can also have a part of that promise, if we join with Christ by commiting our lives to him.
1 Cor 15:22 "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."
God's promises of life throughout the scriptures also apply to us just as readily as that of death after Adam's sin.