The Walk Back to Eden

Hope in Evil After the destruction caused by Cain’s rage, life continued. God chose not to destroy Cain but allowed him to live. Through his life, new lives were formed. Children and children of children replenished the earth. But there was more than procreating that was taking place. God was working in the lives of these people. He was teaching them about His love and His grace for them. As He taught, they listened. There must have been moments when they enjoyed fellowship with their Maker once again. Moments when they walked with Him along the road. Moments when they bowed down to His sovereignty. Amongst His teaching, they called on His name! In our lives when evil seems as though it is winning. We have a choice. Will we let evil win or will we “call on His name”? Looking at this through the lens of God, we must go back to Eden, the place where God desired peace and fellowship with His creation, the place where Adam and Eve called on His name. When sin destroyed this fellowship, it was a temporary destruction. At every twist and turn, God is using situations in life, even the evil circumstances, for His creation to learn to call on His name! When I look at this story, my lack of understanding that God allowed Cain to live gives way to God’s sovereignty. What if God allowed the evil to live in order for His creation to learn to call on His name? There are stories in our lives filled with complexities that we long to find a deeper understanding of. In these complex life stories, the question of why attacks us every moment of every day. No matter how we shake it, it simply does not make sense. We have seen good people die young. We have experienced evil people that prosper. And none of it makes sense to us. But when God uses these horrible situations in life to teach us to call on His name, this is God’s sovereignty at work. This is the way He is leading us back to Eden to fellowship with Him. God uses evil for good! Evil in My Life The dream of having my father love me unconditionally never escaped my desire. I longed to have a father who would keep me safe and protected from this evil world. But instead, my father was the evil from which I needed to be protected. He was the evil in my world. My father was not a drunk, or “wayward.” In fact, he was a pastor of growing, thriving churches, but he used the “goodness of God” as evil in my life. He positioned himself as a man of God when in reality he used his religious position to manipulate and groom me. My young life was tainted as I battled his sexual advances and abusive behaviors. In my journey of healing, I questioned countless times why God did not remove him from this world. Why didn’t He stop it? Why didn’t He end this abuse? Why did God leave the evil? I don’t think that question will ever be answered. But I can answer this: because of this evil in my life, I called on His name! Calling on God was my choice, but it is a path worth choosing. Statistically following God in my life should not have been my path. But it is! I have determined that my trust is going to be in God and God only. Separating from the evil of my father has allowed me to find the goodness of God. In the midst of my healing journey, one of my journal entries is titled “I Looked Evil in the Eye and Survived.” It was a stark reality that evil had raised me. But it was an even greater truth that I had survived. I will never be able to tell you that this was okay. The damage and destruction in my life is beyond explanation. But what I can tell you is that through the midst of evil, I called on His name! The name of God is the only constant I had in my life. God was my survival and my hope. He still is. When we don’t understand the why, we simply need to look to the who and call on His name! Whose name are you calling on today?