Since the fall of man, since Adam and Eve walked around naked in the Garden of Eden, we have been looking for something.
We have been looking for something to fill a hole that was left in our lives.
We were created to live in unity, in oneness with the Lord.
After the fall, we were sent out of the Garden, out of His presence.
Now we wander the Earth, looking for the love that we once received straight from the Lord.
We were created separately from all the rest of the animals, in God’s image, created to be loved by God and to enjoy that love.
Now we spend our lives looking to fill that hole with something, with status, with affirmation, with pleasures, whatever it is, to bring us back to
Eden.
We can never go back to the point in time in which there was no sin.
We can never go back to that perfect love and affirmation that we once received from the Lord.
But the Lord still pours those same things upon us, He still desperately wants to tell us that He loves us, that we are precious, and that He has not forgotten about us.
I was reading John Eldridge’s book The Way of the Wild Heart about a month ago.
In it, it discussed the heart of a lover, that God created us to be lovers.
Not in the sense that most of us immediately think of first, but that He created us in order to lavish His love upon us.
Everyday God wants to tell us and show us how much He loves us. He wrote us poetry.
He wants to give us things that awaken our hearts.
He wants us to be madly in love with Him.
This goes against my presuppositions of God that I had for most of my life; that if I study His laws enough, or be nice enough to other people, that I will earn His love.
That I can figure out God by a book.
But as I wrote in an earlier blog, God is meant to be experienced!
In the same way a husband and wife want to experience life with each other, instead of just writing a list of things about that person.
When I get married someday, I don’t think that making a pie chart displaying how much of my heart was dedicated to her would affect her as much as a poem.
That’s not the way humans, especially women (so I’ve heard), are wired.
And that is not the way God works either.
I don’t think I had ever experienced this quite like I experienced it in
Peru.
Being in the
Andes is magical in its own right, but letting God tell you everyday that He created those mountains for you is pretty special.
That in the same way I might paint something to woo a woman, God painted the earth in greens and blues to woo us, to woo me.
He placed the streams in the fields of flowers to make me come sit by it to think about Him.
He made the snowfall on the violent peaks of the
Andes to glisten in the early golden sun to say “Good morning,” to me.
He placed me at the top of Macchu Picchu to fill me with His wonder and grandeur.
In fact, He tells me every day how much he loves me.
And He does it in wonderful ways, marvelous new ways, every day.
He places those people who have a specific word of encouragement when you need it the most in your path.
He hangs the stars in the midnight sky to wink at you when you sleep, the roar of the oceans to display His strength, the silence of early morning in the green pastures to show how He protects us and cares for us, as an infant sleeping in His father’s powerful arms.
He shows us every day how much He loves us.
We were created to feel His love, to hear His words of affirmation.
We were created to walk in this life hand in hand with the creator of the universe.
Our lives are incredible stories, full of mystery, suspense, comedy, and romance, unfolding before our eyes.
Now we must simply open our eyes to the beauty that is this life.
Our life is a love song with our Lord!
(I’m a bit tentative to post this now that Kelly has posted the already popular man-kiss video.
But I must look to David in the Bible as a display of manliness while discussing this whole Lover of God thing.
He was pretty manly.)
