Understanding God: He Keeps in Touch
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. – Genesis 3:8 (New International Version)
In continuation of our exploration of the nature and personality of God, another insight derived from our reference passage is that He keeps in touch. He does not just set up and leave or commission and then go awol. No, He maintains contact and relationship with His creatures.
The passage we are meditating on today shows us how God sought out Adam and Eve by visiting them in the garden in the cool of the day. There is something about this scenario that suggests that the visit was neither a one-off thing nor an extraordinary one. God must have been regularly visiting the couple before to fellowship with them, since that was one of the reasons He created them in the first place (Revelation 4:11).
This aspect of God should help us to better appreciate the fact that He is even closer to us than we can imagine. The fact that Adam and Eve erred and that created a vacuum between them and God does not mean that God then isolated Himself totally from them or from their descendants after them. If He did, we would not have read about His various encounters and interactions with other individuals and peoples in the Bible. That is one reason.
Therefore, even when humans fell and kept failing Him, God did not abandon them altogether. He was always scouting the length and breadth of the earth to see who He could relate with, offer help to and come through for (2 Chronicles 16:9). The secret to connecting Him when He passes by is to have a pure heart, as that is what He is always scanning to know those ready to house Him.
Secondly, the fact that God later sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to come to the earth to complete the project of reconciling humanity to Himself, this time on a very large scale, shows how much God values connecting with humans and relating with them.
Now, isn’t it interesting to know that God truly values a relationship with us? The fact that we may not see Him in physical form does not negate His existence, reduce His ubiquity or lessen the intensity of His desire to connect.
Indeed, the scriptures and history are replete with the accounts of those who have been able access and form a bond with Him. Those whom He Himself personally called because He had special needs for them, or those who really desired a relationship with Him and paid the price for having it through personal devotion and their life choices. Those to whom His invitation that “you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13) meant more than mere words to. The question is, are you one of them?
Selah!
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