HIS WALKING VOICE
Have you ever found yourself in a big, big mess—the kind of mess in which you cannot “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps?” I define it as my quintessential mess where I, figuratively speaking, need someone to dive into the water to retrieve and resuscitate me!
While some of our messes are of our own doing, others are the result of life in an imperfect world. Whatever the case, the hopelessness, the helplessness, the all-consuming darkness during these times seem almost tangible. It is the descent into the deepest pit of “miry clay” where we are literally sunken by and in the circumstances. If you’ve never been there, you will…eventually, because The Big, Big Mess is as old as time itself and is an equal opportunity employer.
Our original progenitors, Adam and Eve, are the oldest example of “The Biggest Mess—EVER!” Yet their story embraces eternal principles relevant to us, today. It gives us a peek into the Nature of God and how the Master Teacher teaches His own children.
My dad was the consummate educator and as I entered the teaching profession he cautioned me that I was not the oracle of knowledge dissemination to my students. “Experience is a tremendous teacher,” he would say. “Resist constant lecturing. Allow them some freedom and always, always ask questions. Questioning forces the student to think and to internalize the material.”
In the Garden of Eden, the Serpent knew the efficacy of this teaching strategy. His “Hath God said…?” proved successful there and for time immemorial. Satan never physically touched Eve. He simply posed a question and let his words do the work. Evidently, Adam and Eve could not comprehend the extent of their quintessential mess—that it would profoundly impact every single human life that would ever be born, condemning multiplied billions of people over time—but they did know that they had been “altered” and in an extremely “uncomfortable” way. They were so “uncomfortable” in their own skin that they tried to substitute “something else”—fig leaves—but fig leaves eventually rot, fall off, and leave everything exposed which the wearer is attempting to keep covered. Can you picture them in the Garden of Antiquity desperately trying to “fix” that uncomfortable feeling—their altered state—with leaves which had to be repeatedly picked and sewn back on to provide any measure of comfort? It is the quintessential mess “moment” of utter futility. FIG LEAVES CAN’T HANDLE THIS!
But then, the Bible says a strange thing about the Voice of
the Lord God: His Voice came walking
in the Garden “in the cool of the day.” Have you ever heard of a walking voice? Why did the
scriptures describe God’s appearance in the Garden in such a manner? I think it illustrates that in our
quintessential mess the Love of God is always the initiator of help. He is the original “Mover and Shaker.” When we cannot help ourselves, His Voice—His
communicative part of His Being—comes walking to us at a specified time in
which we can hear Him. It is the “cool
of the garden” time in the garden of our hearts. His Voice walks to us; then enters us “even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” There, empowered by His Voice, His Word
reaches where the most skilled of surgeons’ scalpels can never touch nor
remedy.
His Voice faithfully came walking to Adam and Eve and brought a “more sure word of prophecy:” their quintessential mess would be remedied by Messiah’s bruising of Satan’s head.
Thousands of years later, His Voice walked along the sandy
seaside of
His Voice is still walking today—coming to us and requiring introspection: “Where art thou?” He asks… and, with the asking, His Voice brings the power for true change and redemption.