Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Merry Christmas! I hope you had a wonderful holiday and that you experienced God’s presence in some way. For some, this is a joyful time of celebration. For those with loss, it can be a difficult time of reminders, but God’s presence brings life in every situation of our lives.
As the Bible describes the creation of man, there appears to be two significant dichotomies. One was a world of paradise and the other was a world of barrenness.
Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.
Man wasn’t formed from the earth of paradise. He was formed from the dust of barrenness. God then took some time to plant a garden in the midst of the barrenness of the field. It was there that He put the man he had formed from the dust. It was in a place called Eden. Eden means desirable place. The place of desire. It was eastward of the place of man’s formation.
When we wake up in the morning, we see the sun and the sun gives us a testimony of a new day. It is full of promise and expectation. I believe that the eastward place signifies a place of hope and a new day. On a clear morning, we can see the sun rising in the east. In reality the earth turns towards the sun, but the experience is a sunrise and a new day. The experience is more powerful than the scientific knowledge of the turning of the earth. The light of the sun is what touches us. When we turn in the direction of the light, the light shines upon us and our day begins.
I believe that every person is faced with two worlds as an option to live from. One is a world that appears to be absent of the presence of God and the other is a world that is filled with presence of God and a paradise experience with Him every day. One is a place where our desires are inspired by the barrenness of the world. The other is a place where our desires are stirred by knowing God as our friend in life.
Genesis 3:8-10 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
Even at the failure of Adam and Eve, God showed up in His usual way to walk with them in the cool of the day. It appears that God’s greatest desire was to have a friendship connection of conversation and intimacy with man. This was paramount to their destiny as His likeness and image in the earth. I believe Adam and Eve’s testimony was seen as a walk of friendship and love with God.
God so loved the world that He didn’t condemn the world but sent His Son to give life to all men. The world already does a good job of condemning itself. Jesus came to free all humanity from condemnation and the power of condemnation. He didn’t come to condone living in darkness. He came to give men light. In the world there is darkness, and the people in the world are in great darkness, but God has delivered us from the power of darkness, and He conveys those who receive Him into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
It seems that God’s usual pattern in the creation of man was to walk with him and to talk with him at the close of every day. We turn to God in the morning, and He becomes our light, but He comes to us every evening to see what we have done with His light. When we know God as our friend, we can be the light of our friend to the world.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98225-1728
