Pastor John,
I was reading Leviticus 26 this morning, where God lays out for the children of Israel what He will do to them if they will obey him and keep His statutes (verses 3-12), and what He will do if the opposite happens and they refuse to follow His commandments (verses 14-39).
Verses 11-12 stuck out to me:
“And I will put my tabernacle in your midst, and my soul will not abhor you. And I will walk about in your midst, and I will be your God, and you will be my people.”
God’s promise that He will “walk about in your midst” reminded me of the kind of relationship He had with Adam and Eve before the fall. Well, at least Genesis 3:8 seems to suggest that it was not unusual for God, back then, to walk about “in the garden in the evening breeze”, that is, in the very place where Adam and Eve lived. And then I thought, Wow, this has been God’s heart from the beginning; for Him to be able to walk in the midst of His people, to have communion with them, that the whole point of choosing Israel, bringing them out of Egypt, and then giving them all the commandments through Moses was to restore the kind of relationship with men that He used to have with them in the garden, before Adam and Eve sinned.
And then I had a thought I had never had before. When God promised Israel that if they obey Him, He will “walk about in their midst” and that He will be their God, and they will be His people, it was something God desired, something He really wanted from the depth of His heart. When He made this promise, I think He was more excited about fulfilling it (even the word “giddy” came to mind), than the children of Israel were, then or any time later in their history.
In the past, when I read verses like this, I always imagined God’s mindset to be something like this: “If you, my lowly creatures, do what I require, and I will be satisfied with your conduct, I will have pity on you, and will allow you to enjoy my company a little bit.” The thought that having fellowship with us is something God actually loves and enjoys, that He is literally HAPPY to “walk in our midst” is a kind of thought that had never entered my mind. I surely didn’t attribute such thoughts and feelings to God while reading the Old Testament, but I’m pretty sure that has had an effect on how I imagined Him thinking about me or feeling towards me here and now.
Wow, this is something I didn’t even think of, when I started writing this e-mail!
I pray that God will keep cleansing my heart and my mind of wrong thoughts and ideas about who He is and what He is like and that my thoughts and my feelings (about everything and everyone, including myself) would become His thoughts and His feelings. I pray that I won’t allow superstitious fear to stop me from learning, embracing and loving new thoughts about God and His Son; thoughts I probably would have never dared to think before.
Zoli
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