The Greatest Gift
Reading Selection for December 3^rd
“Where Are You?”

Genesis 3:8-9 (NLT) – “So they hid from the Lord God among the trees.  Then the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?”

In my last post I mentioned how as a little girl in Sunday School my big take away from The-Gospel-As-Behavior-Management presentation of the Creation Story helped launch me into life simply trying not to make mistakes because it makes God mad.

Trying not to make mistakes (which unbeknownst to me at the time is IMPOSSIBLE) led to a life, and I use that term loosely—closer to existence–of hiding.  Hiding from God, hiding from myself, hiding from those closest to me.  Hiding took many forms and many masks.  Let me introduce you to a few of them:

“Responsible Girl” –        She was responsible for EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING even remotely connected to her life.  Unfortunately this really made everything about her, including significant world events.

“Self-sufficient Girl”-      She never needed any help for anything even if she was dying…and she was, on the inside.  Her twin is named “NOT the Needy the Girl”.

“Good Girl”-       She couldn’t stand for anyone to ever think she did anything wrong.  If anyone ever did think she had made a mistake it completely undid her and sent her into an emotional tail spin.

“Smart Girl” –     She made me feel better when in my high school career I only had two dates.  And on the nights of my Junior and Senior Proms when I sat at home alone she told me it was going to be better in college and I needed to keep focusing on my grades because some girls were pretty and loveable and some girls were smart.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia.org

And on and on it goes.  Underneath it all the only thing I wanted was to be seen and to be known and to be loved for who I was, not what I did.

The truth is, I was seen, I was known and I was loved for exactly who I was, I just didn’t know it.  And just like Adam and Eve, in the midst of all my hiding, Love was asking, “Where are you, Kim?”  My fear that God was angry with me for all of my failures and mistakes kept me hiding and wearing masks for many more years…so long in fact, that I am now only beginning to know myself.

As I read those verses above in Genesis 3, though, now I don’t hear anger in God’s voice.  I hear a Loving Father searching for His children.  He’s concerned for them and He misses their presence.  He’s asking the question, “Where are you?” not because He doesn’t know where they are, but because they don’t know where they are.  “Where are you?” was an invitation to pause, take stock of their current position and run, not walk, straight back to God.  He was calling them back to Love.

And in a lifetime of hiding, I can now look back (hindsight’s always 20/20 you know) and hear the echoes of the voice of God in my life, “Where are you, Kim?”

He’s been coming for us, for you and me, since the beginning.  And He’s still coming for us, EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.