Life is complicated.
But only because we make it complicated.
Something God has been revealing to me recently is the fact that life is simple. It was designed to be simple.
In the beginning man existed for 2 reasons. 1) to tend the garden and the animals in it and 2) to fellowship and walk with God. Nothing more.
But then we complicated things. Now we live to buy the newest car, to remodel the kitchen, to get the newest iPhone (or Galaxy phone if you’re into that sort of thing), to post the best pictures on Instagram, to go to the most sporting events, to try and make people like us, or to find the newest fashion. The list could go on.
What changed? What is so different from Eden?
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This past month in Costa Rica we were able to meet a lot of wonderful people. One of the people we were privileged to meet was a boy named (in this story anyway) Jose.
Jose was full of life, and fun, and certainly energy. He was always wanting to hang out with us. Sometimes that looked like playing soccer in the street, making bracelets, shooting buckets on our Nerf hoop, Sunday school, or even nothing at all.
He just wanted to be in our presence.
His family life was really pretty non-existent. He had a younger brother but neither parent was really influencing Jose’s life. So he turned to someone else to fill the void.
The first place Jose turned was Seth and Andrea, our ministry contacts for the month, but they are not at the property all the time. And when they are working with other people they can’t provide the individual attention Jose craves.
So when a bunch of gringos turned up to live at the ministry property for a month Jose saw an opportunity. And he took advantage of the opportunity.
We saw a lot of Jose over the past month, sometimes when we didn’t want to. And once he was inside it was difficult to get him back out. There were nights when we said “Hasta mañana” probably 10 times each before we could actually get him out the door.
But I don’t hold it against Jose at all. He was just looking for the thing we lost in Eden.
The thing that changed.
Because when sin entered the world we lost our relationship with God. No longer could we stroll in the garden with God walking alongside us. We no longer had fellowship with the Father. And while we never lost the love of the Father, it became far less tangible because we were no longer in the presence of God.
Relationship with the Father became a thing of the past and a hope for the future, but nothing more. We were left with a gaping hole in our being and we could not fill it.
We still can’t.
But we try. We try with cars, with drugs, with sex, with clothes.
With people.
So many of us were abandoned by people in our lives and we think the hole in our being comes from them but it was already there. They help us to become aware of it and we think, because I found it when a person left, a person can fill the void.
Jose is the perfect example. His father is not around. His mother is not plugged in to his life. So he turned to us.
Because we had love. We showed love.
And he craved it.
The gap in his existence was finally getting a taste of what it was missing. Of the real thing. But not because we were generating real, true love. We can’t.
But Jesus can. Jesus did.
And because He now resides in us, we can show others what true love looks like. A glimpse of it anyway. This is why we are here. On earth yes, but also here on The World Race.
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”
We all crave love. But not just any love. We all crave God’s love. We crave His presence.
Because that’s what changed in Eden. We lost access to God’s presence and we have been trying to find our way back into it ever since.
But we can never walk into His presence on our own.
So how do we find His presence again?
We don’t. Jesus brings us in. All we have to do is accept the free gift given to us.
“But now, by giving himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in his presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that!”
So shed all the complications life seems to offer.
We want true, deep, love that can only come from being in the presence of the Father.
Jesus gave us the way to enter into the Father’s presence. For free.
Open the gift.
