What a difference a day makes! Yesterday we awakened to a frosty white world of snow. Walking through the woods yesterday morning felt like a Robert Frost poem. (Shout out to my 7th grade English teacher, Mrs. Linklater who loved poetry, taught me to love it, and came to hear my first sermon at our church in Germany.) All was right with the beautiful world. As the snow melts and the footprints of all the sledders soften, we walk today in a muddy mess. What a change from pristine snow to gray slush, in a single day.
The garden of Eden had been perfectly made. It was pristine. Then, in a single day paradise was lost. The people created in the image of God had never felt shame. Their sin made them run from God and hide. For the first time they tried to get away from God when they heard him walking in the garden. They knew God was holy, holy, holy and they were unholy, unholy, unholy.
Here is grace in the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament): God came looking for them. He called out to them, like a Father searching for lost children, “Where are you?” Adam confessed his fear and his shame. Everything had changed. God drew closer: who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree? Adam passed the buck: “The woman you put here with me . . .” He blamed the woman, but also God for having made her. God asked the woman and she too shifted the blame. “The serpent deceived me and I ate it.” In the end, both humans confessed their sin, “I ate it.”
Do we ever try to hide from God? Where can we go? In a song, Psalm 139, David articulated the truth: God is inescapable. The prophet Jonah would later learn the same thing. We can run from God, but we cannot evade him. As we struggle under the weight of our secret shame, does it help to know that God knows us and still pursues us? He has not given up on us. As an alternative, may I suggest that when we sin, we run towards God and not away from him? Jesus told a beautiful story of a Father who forgave a son who came home after he ran away. It could happen again. The God who creates also restores and rejoices when his children come to ourselves and come home.
