Hiding From God and Hiding in Him

UV 3446/10000 Hiding from God and Hiding in Him
He said, “ I heard the sound of You walking in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”
Genesis 3 v 10

The serpent leader is the father of fear. Before man’s fall, he did not need to fear anything but after his fall, the awareness of evil overcame the awareness of good in him. On account his wrong doing or disobedience, man began to fear God for the first time. So he hid from God, the source of everything good and the very source of life. It became the cause of hostility between man and God. The sound of God walking in the garden should have produced assurance, confidence in man but it did the opposite. Hence, the source of all man-made religion is this primordial fear of God and of divine retribution or punishment for wrong doing. The Servant Leader is the author not of fear but of salvation. He redeems man from the dysfunctional fear of God. We can hide in Him as a shy child hides in the folds of his mother’s clothes.

Fear begets fear and sin begets sin. The separation of man from God is the separation from life itself or death. The Servant Leader came to set us free from fear for when we know Him as Truth, He sets us free from all our fears including the universal fear of mortality. The serpent leader led man into sin or separation and its deadly consequences while the Servant Leader leads man away from sin into righteousness. As St Paul wrote, sin came through the first Adam, the son of God and salvation came through the second Adam, Christ, the Son of God and of man.

Today, the followers of the Servant Leader hear the sound of God walking and talking in their hearts. We should hold nothing in our hearts that make us afraid to face Him. If we have, we can turn to the Servant Leader to confess, have ourselves cleansed of it and be strengthened not to repeat it. We can confide our deepest worries, anxieties, fears in Him who is our Advocate before the High Court of God, the One who is our Counsellor, the One who sent us the Comforter and Remebrancer, the Holy Spirit who aids us in the process of the sanctification of our lives, our souls. The awareness of the evil lurking in us, around us, in the world, the role the serpent leader plays in instigating, abetting and provoking evil in us to have us ensnared causes us to hide in our Redeemer, the Servant Leader.