I am really excited about the year ahead of us as we seek God's Word together! My hope is to have 52 living love stories from Genesis and beyond. One of my favorite scriptures is Ephesians 2:13, which declares that we who once were far away are now brought near through the blood of Jesus! Yes, our hearts should do a somersault! As a worshipper, there are a few things that really ignite my passion for the Lord, and being brought near to God through the precious blood of Jesus poured out for me is one of those things.
This first love story reminds us of why we need that precious blood, why we are so indebted to our Savior Jesus. The story weaving throughout scripture begins here...
Just in the act of creation itself, God showed personal attention and desire for relationship, but I want to spend a moment on just two details. One, Genesis 2:7 tells us He breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life. God could have commanded Adam's life into existence, but did He? Did He just speak humankind into existence as He did the other masterpieces? No, He got His hands dirty...literally. And once the man was formed from the dust of the ground, He bent down and put His mouth to face of the first man and breathed. That is intimate. I'm thinking: How many faces do you get that close to, close enough to breathe on? He didn't have to do that. God has always been about face to face encounters. God has always been about reaching us.
Two, after Adam and Eve had sinned, Genesis 3:8 says that God came walking in the garden looking for them. They were hiding because their sin had brought about an awareness...an awareness of evil, an awareness of how it feels to be ashamed and wish time could be rolled back--oh, how we all know that sickening feeling--and maybe even an awareness of how good they had had it. In having my own children, I'm flooded with sadness just thinking of the moment my girls find out about certain evils in the world...and worse yet, my heart breaks at the thought of when they are entrapped in their own sin someday. I wonder if that is just a tiny glimpse into the heart of God, how He felt that day when Adam and Eve lost their pure childlike innocence. And yet, He was still coming their way. Perhaps He came in the cool of the evening every day to talk with His friends. It doesn't sound from this passage as if this little stroll was a rare occurrance. This time, did He come to hear the whole story out of their own mouths? Yes. To punish them and cast them out of Paradise? Yes. We can't get out of that. God has never changed. He has never swayed on the standard of holiness and truth; He won't do it. But as we know, God would make a way--crafted entirely before the creation of man--that His standard of purity could once again be met by man. God has always been about finding us.
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