Divine Presence
“And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.” (Genesis 3:8, KJV). After a few weeks of pondering and trying to view this passage from multiple angles, I’m coming up with a selfish reality: I’ve been trying to bust Adam for acting cowardly. He hid from the face of God. His continuous hiding hurts him and the people that love him. Finally, God’s presence overwhelmed him, and he freaked out and did what he thought was best. Hide!
Click HERE for part one of this reflection. My original curiosity stemmed from the word “cool” in King James Version, and my search led me to the Hebrew word לְרוּחַ (lê'ru'ahh), meaning wind. The Presence of God as a form of cool wind is a vivid memory that lives in me daily, even though it happened over thirty years ago across the globe in Vietnam. The cells on my face know that cool intimately.
It was Good Friday in my Catholic village in Vietnam, and I had spent an afternoon praying with my fellow youth group members over the reenactment of stations of the cross. It was the grand finale, and all the kids were seated at the front with the youngest age groups, yours truly, in attendance at the front. My head tilted back like watching a movie in the first row at the theater, and my mouth hanging open. Then, I heard hammers banging on a wooden board and saw my youth pastor crucified and erected on the cross; I tapped out.
It was already dark. My older sisters were still on campus but not visible. I knew I couldn’t convince them to leave their friends to walk home with me. I was too scared to stay the rest of the evening. For a seven-year-old, it was a terrifying walk home. It was only 0.2 kilometers, but it felt like five miles.
There were no sidewalk lights. There were no sidewalks! Rumors had it that the house at the front of the street had a snake problem in their coconut tree, and the dad stroke the snake and killed it. Lore also said that when you kill a snake, its whole family looks for it. The street was sandy; if I tried to run, it would only slow me down. So I was doomed to be eaten by a grieving family of snakes that evening.
The torment of my mind did not evoke the most fear in me that evening but the repercussions of what awaited me at home. I had left churching during the opening act, and there was still mass. I was about an hour and a half earlier than expected. Disobedience came with consequences, and I risked a beating coming home too early. I assessed my situation as to what was least painful to experience: Christ hanging on the cross, becoming snake food, or getting a beating. I chose the beating.
As I walked into the front yard of my house, I felt the cool of the evening air on my face. I can feel the air on my warm face cooling me from the walk and fright. The sweet aroma signaled that our Easter lily blossomed that evening. Mom had talked about it for weeks and how it’s a symbol for St. Joseph, and this night it bloomed while we were at church. The wind carried its glorious smell to my nostrils, mixing with the dampness of clouds descending towards the ground, intensified the experience on my face.
I experienced this cool air again in 2017 when I had an intense dream of an end time where I was standing in a foot of warm water in a lake on a sweltering day. Everyone was just standing around, and there was no shoreline. Everyone was in a hot, uncomfortable situation. The skies then rained large balls of fire, and people were blown up and thrown upwards into the air. I saw a church member in the far distance and was running toward him when a ball of fire prevented me from getting to him.
In a moment of panic, I did what I knew was my last resort. I screamed at the top of my lung, “JESUS! I NEED YOU!”. Then, a black hole opened up, the ones you see in children’s cartoons that suck everything into its void. I dove into the darkness, and the minute I cleared its opening, I felt the familiar cool air on my face and woke up. I woke up to my heart pounding in my chest and feeling every pulse down to my toes.
That cool air was no longer foreign. I knew what it was the minute I entered the black hole. The physical memory of the two experiences was identical. Over thirty years apart, the feeling on my face was the same.
I walked into the hut thirty years before to find my mother sewing by candlelight. My dad was at church. I was sent to bed. No beating, just mom with God welcoming me home.
The first experience of the Presence didn’t reveal itself as a Divine Presence until I experienced it again through my call for Christ in a moment of life and death. A spiritual mystery that took thirty years to reveal. I experience God through my senses of smell and touch. Adam experienced God through sound and feel as well. So why did Adam have a different reaction to this same call?
God can call any one of us at any time in our life in any place. It’s His choice who and how he calls them. My experience and Adam’s experience link us to the creation and the God who made us. God calls those who worship Him in spirit and truth. It was the God of the Jews that called a girl from a hut in Vietnam. Jesus explained to the Samaritan woman at the well, “Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.” (John 4:22-23, KJV).
God showing up evoked so much fear in Adam that he took his woman and hid. Hiding from the truth prevents the worship of God. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that walking with God was an activity Adam did daily, like the descendant of Adam’s son Seth. In Enoch, “Enoch walked with God; then he was no more because God took him.” (Genesis 5:24). In this same lineage through Noah from the Great Flood, “These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” (Genesis 6:9).
God didn’t have a ring camera on the tree to keep tabs on Adam and Eve to ensure they behaved and showed up right when they failed, which would be something I would do to bust my brother for doing something wrong. God showed up for their usual walk, and they were missing. They were missing from their daily prayer with God, which flagged Him to their sin.
In the transfiguration, Jesus took Peter, James, and John up to a high mountain to pray and had a different experience than Adam. In Jesus’ prayer, God appeared as a cloud, and God’s voice was heard amongst them, “While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.”
When Adam turned from God, God’s Presence became torment instead of comfort when his soul no longer welcomed God. By hiding when God came, God had to call him out, “And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” (Genesis 3:9). Find me a man that enjoys being called out, and I’ll show you a liar. He felt fear before; now, he feels weak and ashamed.
Image: Cassatt, Mary. Poppies in a Field, Oil on Panel, 1875.