Safe and Secure

Broken lives and shattered relationships, complete with bruised hearts and destroyed dreams, dot the landscape of our world.  It was not always so.  Before sin entered paradise with its companions of shame and guilt, Scripture says Adam and Eve lived naked and unashamed.   While the literal reading is clearly physical, it is not unseemly to consider that statement in the context of relational vulnerability.  God longs for us to be in fellowship with Him and one another.  In a fallen world such as ours, the only safe way to love others is first placing oneself in the middle of Love:  Jesus Christ.

Perhaps it is that placement that allowed Adam and Eve to live in such vulnerability.  Before sin, before they stepped outside of the Light of obedience, perhaps the very glory of God encased them.  While we can’t know that, we can know the teachings of Jesus Christ are sure:

John_11:9, 10   Jesus answered,  “… If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world.   But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.”

Walking in light is walking in the presence of God, just as Adam and Eve did.  His presence is a place where there is fullness of joy, everlasting pleasures (Psalm 116:11); strength and glory (1Chronicles 16:27) and ultimately no hunger, thirst or tears (Revelation 7:16).  God continually calls us into His presence.  It is a place of safety for every relationship.

When Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden, an angel was put in place to guard the way to the Tree of Life.  We read that as if we are being kept away–when the opposite is more in line with Scripture.  The way is guarded that we might not enter in without the covering of Christ.  Relationships outside the source of life bring the broken-ness and death we see in our world today.

Once we allow the blood of Christ to be our covering, Paradise – the Presence of God—is ours to enjoy.  We can invite others in to live with us; it is our awesome privilege as children of the King.  Not all will be willing to receive the covering of Christ’s blood.  We can still love them safely from our position of security in the source of Life and Love.  Even though some relationships and circumstances we will encounter in the world will reek of sin, we remain secure!  We are to overcome sin with love, remembering:

…. that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 8:38-39)

 Walk in the Light.  Walk in victory.  Invite others to walk with you!