Where Are You?

Sep 21

Recently I found myself meditating—late at night, of course—on one of, if not the, favorite verses of Scripture in my life: “in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8). This particular verse seems rather innocuous at first, but when one really stops to consider it, the layers begin to unfold in many surprising and, more often than not, heartbreaking ways.

Tonight was heartbreak.

It was heartbreak because a new thought occurred to me in the dark and deep of meditation: the Fall was not ours alone. It affected God too.

Before you get out the pitchforks and accuse me of heresy, allow me to explain.

I am not saying that God somehow contracted original sin, nor that God Himself entered into some sort of fallen state. God remains perfectly good, perfectly holy, and perfectly sovereign. What I am saying is that in a post-Fall world, God no longer walks with us as He once did, “in the cool of the day.” That relationship has been deeply fractured.

And that is what struck me so forcefully. We rightly speak of humanity being exiled from Eden. We speak of Adam and Eve being driven from the garden, of the cherubim stationed at its entrance, and of the way to the Tree of Life being closed. But Eden was not simply our home. It was the place where God walked with us.

Genesis gives us an almost unbearably intimate image. God is not presented as some distant deity shouting commandments down from heaven. He walks in the garden. He is present there with Adam and Eve, sharing creation with them in a way that is difficult for us, in our fallen world, even to imagine.

There was no Temple because there was no need for one. There was no veil separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of creation. We walked shoulder to shoulder with the Holy of Holies. There was no priest mediating between God and man. Creation itself was sanctuary, and man walked with God within it.

Then came the Fall.

Adam and Eve ate, juice from the forbidden fruit stained their lips. Their eyes were opened like a fresh wound from which shame would enter. And when they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, they did something humanity has been doing ever since: they hid. Suddenly the cool of the day had a chill to it.

Then God calls out, “Where are you?”

Of course God knew where Adam was. The question was not geographical. It was relational. Where are you? Where is the man who walked with Me? Where is the creature who knew Me without fear? Where is My beloved, now hiding among the trees?

And suddenly the Fall begins to look even more tragic. Because when humanity was driven from Eden, something more than human happiness was lost. The place where God and man walked together was lost as well.

The strange thought that occurred to me that night was that Adam and Eve were not the only ones who lost something when the gates of Eden closed. God had made a world in which He could dwell with His creatures, a garden in which He could walk beside them in the cool of the day. Man’s sin did not diminish God, nor could it rob Him of anything He possessed by nature, but it did rupture the communion He had freely chosen to establish with us.

In that sense, perhaps there were two exiles from Eden. Man was driven from the garden, certainly, but God too was, in a manner of speaking, driven from the world He had intended to share with us. Not because He ceased to be present. Not because creation somehow slipped beyond His sovereignty. The earth remained His. But the easy intimacy of Eden was gone. God would no longer simply walk beside His creatures without fear, shame, sacrifice, veil, or blood standing between them.

And into that emptiness stepped another ruler.

Scripture will eventually call Satan “the ruler of this world.” Not its creator. Not its rightful king. Never its true owner. He is instead the usurper, occupying territory that belongs to another. The Fall did not hand creation to Satan as though Adam possessed the authority to give away what belonged to God, but humanity’s rebellion opened the door through which sin and death entered, and through which the ancient serpent would exercise a terrible influence over the world.

The garden had been made for God and man.

Now man wandered outside its gates, and the serpent slithered through the ruins.

That, to me, is where the heartbreak lies.

Because salvation history can then be read not merely as mankind desperately attempting to return to God, but as God refusing to accept the separation. Again and again, He comes looking for us.

Consider the famous painting The Creation of Adam. God the Father is on the right, Adam is on the left. Both the Father’s and Adam’s arms are outstretched. But look a little closer and an interesting detail emerges.

God’s finger is extended toward Adam, while Adam’s hand seems almost limp. Whether Michelangelo intended the symbolism or not, the image lends itself beautifully to the story of salvation. God reaches. Man hesitates. The distance between Creator and creature is agonizingly small, yet somehow we continually fail to cross it. All Adam would need to do is lift his finger.

God is constantly reaching for us, while we so often hold back.

And this is where the story becomes something more than tragedy.

Because God does not abandon Adam outside the garden. He does not retreat forever into heaven and leave mankind to wander through the thorns. Again and again throughout Scripture, God moves toward His people. He speaks to Noah. He calls Abraham. He wrestles with Jacob. He appears to Moses in fire. Even after Eden, the God who once walked beside man continues looking for ways to dwell among him.

Eventually, in the wilderness, God says something extraordinary to Moses:

“Let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.”
— Exodus 25:8

There is something deeply moving about that command when read in the shadow of Eden.

Humanity once possessed a garden in which God walked freely among us. We lost it. Now, centuries later, God speaks to a wandering people in a barren wilderness and essentially tells them: Build Me a place among you.

Not a palace.

A tent.

The God of heaven asks for a tent because His people are living in tents. He is a shepherd amongst his flock.

The Israelites wander, so God wanders with them. They camp, and He camps in their midst. They move, and the dwelling of God moves with them. The intimacy of Eden has not yet been restored, but neither has God abandoned His desire to live among His children.

The Hebrew language makes this even more beautiful. The word associated with the dwelling presence of God is Shekhinah, drawn from the same family of words as mishkan, the Tabernacle. It expresses the astonishing idea of the God who chooses to dwell in the midst of His people.

Later Jewish tradition would even speak of the Shekhinah accompanying Israel into exile. When Israel is driven from its land, God does not simply remain behind. His Presence goes with them.

There is something almost parental about that image. If the children are homeless, the Father will not be content merely to watch them from His house.

He goes with them.

And perhaps that is what God had been doing from the very beginning.

Adam leaves Eden, but God does not stop searching for Adam.

Yet that relationship is no longer what it was in the garden.

God was among His people, but the intimacy of Eden had not been restored. The Holy of Holies stood at the heart of the sanctuary, but access was restricted. The veil marked both presence and separation. God had come near, but fallen man could not yet simply walk into that presence as Adam once had in the garden. The relationship was real, but wounded. There was still distance. There was still fear. There was still blood.

And then came the Incarnation.

The God who once walked with Adam in the cool of the day did not wait for humanity to find its way back to Him. He came to us.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

That word, “dwelt,” is everything. God did not merely visit. He pitched His tent among us. The One who had dwelt in the Tabernacle and behind the veil, draped in fabric now took on the drapings of human flesh. No longer hidden in cloud and fire, He walked our roads, entered our homes, ate at our tables, touched the sick, wept with mourners, and allowed sinners to draw near.

The distance between God and man had begun to finally, inevitably, collapse.

The God who had asked Adam, “Where are you?” had come down Himself to find us.

After that fateful Friday we call Good, and after the stillness of the tomb, St. John recounts a peculiar incident. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb on Sunday morning and encounters the Risen Lord, though at first she does not recognize Him. Instead, she mistakes Him for the gardener.

The irony is almost too beautiful to miss.

The story began in a garden.

Man had hidden among the trees from the God who came looking for him, asking, “Where are you?” Now, after the Cross, after death itself had been broken open, a woman stands in another garden before the Risen Christ and mistakes Him for the gardener.

Perhaps, in a way, she was not entirely wrong.

The Gardener had returned.

The One who once walked with Adam in the cool of the day now stood once more in a garden. Only this time He was not calling out to a frightened man hiding among the trees. He was calling a woman by name.

“Mary.”

And with that, she recognized Him.

There is something deeply moving about that reversal. In Eden, man hears the voice of God and hides. In the garden of the Resurrection, Mary hears the voice of God and turns toward Him. The wound opened in one garden begins to close in another.