Fluid with God

It is amazing to me how God brings all the pieces of a day together and forms a story, even echoing parts of His story. I started the morning preaching on Genesis 1-2: on creation, rest and communion with God, and here I was living it.

But, in Genesis 3 there was an act that we cannot get much more than a snippet of understanding…but right to the point, humans committed high treason. We ate from the tree of “I want to be my own boss” (the meaning of the Hebrew idiom- “knowledge of good and evil”) and shalom was shattered. We lost so much. We destroyed so much. Humanity experienced the big Crash from which all of the smaller crashes continue to ripple out.

What did we lose? I got another glimpse of a world that once was (and what happened) through our autism support group. Many of the parents we know who have a child with autism can tell you of a time when their child was around 18-24 months old, developing nicely…and then they regressed into this little inner-world that struggles to let anyone in. The language stops. The understanding stops. The eye contact stops. Listening to these parents, it is like something leaked out of their child never to come back again. I wonder if that is how God felt that one particular day He came to the garden to play in His creation, in that special place with human beings, only to find that something had leaked out of His children. They no longer want to speak to Him. They cannot make eye contact with Him. It’s like they lost the ability to play. Of course, this was not some innocent tragedy. The original humans had betrayed God and something happened to them that created instant isolation and alienation. To eat the fruit of “I want to be my own boss” meant that God could not be trusted, that He wasn’t good (or at least good enough) and that they could run this universe better than Him. It was a claim to His position as king. It was a revolt. It was a denouncement of His friendship. So they had to leave. We had to leave. I wonder sometimes how grieved God must have been as He watched these two “playmates” walk silently out of their sacred space, heads hung low in shame and loss.

Thankfully, the story doesn’t end there either! But, we are getting ahead of ourselves. We are at the beginning of the story, right after the crisis has shattered the characters and the calm. We are still remembering distant, latent memories and longing for more of God and more of His world that once was and will be again.

And I, on this Labor Day weekend of 2010, found myself- yet again- living the story on a trampoline with my beautiful little boy who was soaking up the unadulterated one-on-one time he had with his dad. Indeed, I found myself encountering God; looking through His eyes at His partially restored creation awaiting its full restoration. Here we were- Micah and me- in our “sacred space”, our “garden”, resting, bouncing, playing. There is just something about bouncing that helps calibrate his little mind. He thinks better. He communes better. During our “plop-down” times, he will look at me directly in the eyes and smile and tell me he’s “happy”. He asks for tickles and kisses. It’s in these small moments, that I wonder if we will get to relive this moment again one day when we have both passed from this world and into God’s new garden. I wonder if we will bounce and play in our trampoline. What will Micah express to me in complete sentences with inflection and unhindered mind in our sacred space now renewed? What will our relationship be like when whatever leaked out is put back in? It is something I can barely even dream of, though I pray for those dreams to come at night.

This was a window of clarity for me; a moment of revelation in which God gave me a glimpse of a world that once was; a world I could barely imagine. It was an unmistakable encounter with God. It is small hours and little wonders like this where I realize how much we’ve truly lost, how badly we’ve screwed things up in this world, and yet, how much God must truly love us; how much He is looking forward to the time when all things are re-born and His creation is making eye contact again; how much He is truly invested in making all things new, re-forging shalom and…playing again.