Me and Eve. A Connection

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Genesis 2:16-17

And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" Genesis 3:2-3

I can relate to Eve in the way that she added to God's guidelines for her life. You shall not eat of the tree became you shall not even touch the tree. I so often want to live life in a safe box of clear delineations and rules. If there are enough rules, life becomes very easy and the good/bad moral line is easy to see and easy not to cross. There is some comfort in knowing how close one can skate to the line and still be on "the good side." But as we mature and can 'reason like a man' the freedoms in Christ are ours to run through a moral filter. We begin to tackle the gray areas of "if a man has lusted, he has already committed adultery" and our need for a Savior becomes so much more apparent. With every misstep we are reminded of how much we truly can't do on our own, and how much his overwhelming mercies are new every morning.

I can also relate that when I am flirting with the enemy's lies how my Yahweh becomes Elohim (Yahweh being the LORD - the personal, intimate, relational name of God and Elohim being the "generic" name for god.) Suddenly my merciful, gracious and loving Savior becomes an impersonal entity with an unknown face and unknown ways. He is no longer Jesus of Nazareth; he becomes merely a god-spirit that I'm wandering through time and space trying to meet, understand or please. His heart unknown, his desires closed off to me until I fit every facet of my being back into the "good box." A box that is in fact of my own creation.

It is not until I'm naked in my shame and misery that Yahweh comes looking for me, and I again find myself in him.