Where Are You? & Where Is Your Brother?

“Where are you?” and “Where is your brother?”  These are two of the very first questions that God asks in the Bible.  Both questions are provoked by the effects of sin.  These questions reveal what is at stake when we disobey God, they spell out, in graphic detail the destructive cost of sin.  

In a once beautiful garden, two frightened figures cower behind a shrub.  Its a feeling they’ve never known before, but there they hide with quivering hands …

”Eve?”  

“Yes, Adam?”  

“Why are my hands shaking?”  

“I don’t know Adam, my are too?”  

“I can’t get them to stop Eve!”  

“I know, I can’t either.  And my stomach feels very strange, I feel like I’m going to be sick”

“Me too.  Um, Eve?”

“What Adam?”

“Why are we hiding?”

“I don’t know Adam.  I guess in case God comes by.”

“But why are we hiding from God, We’ve never done that before.  Being with God is like the best part of our day.”  

“I don’t know why, something feels different.  I don't feel right.  I don’t know how to explain it, I feel so isolated.”  

“Me too Eve, me too.”  

“Shh Adam, be quite, I think I hear God.” 

For the first time in the history of humanity, mankind ran from God.  We have been running ever since that day.  Did God not know where Adam and Eve were?  Was he really puzzled?  Were Adam and Eve the world’s most accomplished hide and seek champions?  Not likely, God knew exact location.  This question was for Adam, Eve, and us.  It is a question that broadcasts a bone-chilling reality, sin divorces us from God.    

Intriguingly, it was not God that hid his face from Adam and Eve, he arrived seeking them, even calling for them.  

“Adam?  Eve?  Where are you?”  “Did you eat from that tree that I told you not to eat from?”  

God’s desire to be with our first parents was unchanged by their lunch.  Sin does not deter God’s passion to be with his children.  God loves every human being, and nothing can make him “fall out of love with us”, He’s not that fickle.  

Yet, something prompted this isolation.  Adam and Eve ran from God for some reason.  Why?…  God’s image.  Adam and Eve were created to reflect his image throughout creation.  Every time  they looked into each other’s face, and gazed upon their reflection in the brook, they saw God.  After their snack, they looked at each other and saw a stranger, they looked into the brook and were confused, they could recognize the person staring back at them.  

Later, a man would be greeted with a similar question by God, “Where is your brother?”  However, this question that God issued to Cain, could have been equally relevant for his parents.  This is the cost of sin, the creation of isolation and fear.  It was on a Saturday, at least according to church tradition, that Christ entered into this isolation and fear, forever vanquishing it.  

He is still calling, “where are you?”  He knows precisely where you are.  There’s no reason to hide, he already knows your shame, and yet, he still calls your name.  A call which constantly reminds each of us that without Him, our reflection will never look right.  “Where are you?”  “Where is your brother?”  For each of us, the conditions may differ, but the answer remains the same, Jesus!