Have you ever let your mind wander into what Eden would have been like… if the goodness of creation in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 remained and the fall never happened?

Yesterday I wrote that it is often difficult to stop and see creation without the shadow of sin darkening the view. And while I know full well what comes next, I honestly don’t want to read this part. I really don’t. I want to stay in the beauty of yesterday’s realties to be enraptured not enraged. But I can’t stay there… I can’t stay in the perfection of Eden because that time in Eden didn’t last.

I’m one of those people that will turn away from a movie, change the channel of a TV show, read really fast and skip a few words to get past the bad parts of the story…

But we can’t do that here. We have to face it because hiding from the harshness of truth will work just about as well for us as it did for Adam and Eve. And *spoiler* it didn’t work for them at all… not even a tiny, little bit. God saw right through to the truth, there is no hiding sin.

I heard it once said:

“The bad news is worse than you thought but the good news is better than you could imagine.”

And here in Genesis we come face-to-face with that reality. Ephesians 2 tells us that we were all once dead in our transgressions and sins. Doesn’t matter how much that crafty serpent turned words around, sin leads to death. It didn’t matter if Adam and Eve donned some foliage and tried to hide… There is a stain of sin that cannot be hidden because its work in us betrays all, corrupts all, seeps through all… we cannot hide it.

There is nothing that happens, even in the deepest of darknesses, that the light of Christ will not expose.

And that’s a good thing.

Because the wondrous, craziest truth of the whole thing is that God meets us in the deepest of brokenness, in the ugliest of sinfulness, in the hidden depths of our depravity… and He meets us with the hope, love, grace and truth of Christ. Because “this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4:10

The God that we read of yesterday who made us in His image, knows the truth about us and still loves us, made a way where there was no other way, sees through all that we desperately want to hide showing us the depths of the bad news in order to shine the light of the good news better than we could ever imagine: God is love. Love paid the penalty for us. Love beckons out of darkness and hiding. Love compels us to live in light of God’s love in return.

And I’m blown away by the awe and wonder of it all!

8 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. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

Genesis 3: 8-9

Adam and Eve hid in the garden of Eden, caught in their shame. And God, God called them out of the shadows… and He calls us too. We may not be making crude clothes out of leaves but the camouflage with which we try to conceal sin is just as inadequate as those leaves…

Just like a child who is hurt and in fear hides their wound crying, “don’t touch it!” We too keep in darkness the very things that break our heart, crush our minds and kill our spirit… but God is too good to leave us in hiding… God calls us into the marvelous light.

And oh that light pierces all, revealing all so that God alone can heal all. What we have done is worse than we ever could fully grasp but what Christ has done is better than we ever could imagine.

That same God who called Adam and Eve out of hiding also beckons you today… and I don’t know about you, but I’ll never get over the awe and wonder of God who loves like that!

~Jillene