The Long Journey Home: Broken

If it played out once, it played out a hundred times in my living room. “It was her fault Dad”...”No it wasn’t,  so and so made me do it”! These words rehearsed time and again in response to almost every situation imaginable. And those words, or ones like them, have been repeated down through the generations since God confronted Adam and asked him, “Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”  The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” — Genesis 3:11-13
We are so familiar with the blame game, it rolls off our tongue without even thinking about it. We easily  share or shed the blame with accusation, exaggeration or innuendo. And while we act incensed when we are on the receiving end, it often does not surprise us when we are the ones thrown under the bus. After all our experience in a broken world and broken relationships has left us anticipating betrayal and rejection. But imagine for a moment that first time, experienced within a relationship that had never known any tension, any emotion other than love. Adam’s words would have pierced the very soul of Eve. After all, Eve had never felt betrayal, she lacked any categories to understand what she was experiencing. This was a new experience, a new emotion. The man who had always been a source of security and significance for her had pushed away from her. He had placed her in the crosshairs of what God had said meant death.
What had happened? What had gone wrong? Sin had entered God’s creation, invaded His beautiful design.  And sin wasted no time doing what sin does best. Sin destroys relationships as it upends the created order, and seeks to rob glory from the Creator. Sin centers the cosmos around me, creating a counterfeit and lopsided world that subjects the creation to the self creating disconnects at every relational level. Where harmony and intimacy once existed there is strife and discord . Man had willfully disconnected himself from God and now found himself disconnected from the rest of the created order. The relationship that had initially brought both of them such joy and satisfaction was now fractured.
But in the middle of a heartbreaking turn of events in the creation narrative there is a glimmer of hope. Where man pushed away from God, God moved towards man. In Genesis 3:8 God comes looking for Adam. And this profound act of love and grace reveals the heart of God for humanity. Man pushed away from God but God moves towards man. And the drama of redemption begins as God sets a plan and course to reestablish His created order and bring a fractured world and a broken humanity back into relationship with Him. That same God who moved towards Adam and Eve in the garden, has moved in love towards you with an offer of wholeness and restored relationship. Will you continue to hide? Or will you recognize and return to the one who gave you life?
(Aaron Gesch is pastor of Basin First Baptist Church.)