Walking in the Garden

Wednesday, November 30

Genesis 3:8-15

New Living Translation (NLT)

 8 When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. 9 Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

 10 He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”

 11 “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?”

 12 The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”

 13 Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?”

   “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”

 14 Then the Lord God said to the serpent,

   “Because you have done this, you are cursed


      more than all animals, domestic and wild.


   You will crawl on your belly,


      groveling in the dust as long as you live.


 15 And I will cause hostility between you and the woman,


      and between your offspring and her offspring.


   He will strike[b] your head,


      and you will strike his heel.”

Well, I am feeling the curse today. I can’t remember anymore how long I’ve been sick with this cold but I finally listened to my husband and got antibiotics so I’m hoping to feel the blessing soon from the dominion God gave people over the world that enabled doctors to figure out such things as antibiotics. (Who needs punctuation!?)

Can you even imagine the joy of hearing God walking in the garden? To have that be a regular part of your soundscape? 

And then to suddenly dread hearing God walking?

Now we are reduced to Moses being hidden in the cleft of the rock by the Lord’s hand so he could see just the very tail end of God’s glory and that’s about as good as it gets in this fallen world. (Which is pretty good!!! But we aren’t Moses. Or Peter, James, or John, who witnessed Jesus’ transfiguration.)

Oh, what Adam and Eve gave up! What we give up every day with a thousand choices!

This passage is the bad news, and the good news. It is the beginning of sin, death, sickness, strife. It is the beginning of the blame game - of finding everyone and everything else to blame for our own sinful choices.

But this is also the beginning of the story of redemption. Really, it began infinitely sooner, with the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8), but here God reveals to people that he is providing a way for the curse to be overthrown in our lives, for us to walk again in the garden with our God.

This is the first precious promise that Jesus would defeat Satan. His head is crushed!

God immediately had the answer prepared to the biggest of all problems. He himself was the solution. And he still does, and he still is.

Tomorrow’s reading:  Gen. 15:1-6