#135 - Where Are You? {Reflections}

God’s first move after failure isn’t a lecture. It’s a question: “Where are you?” Ryan takes us into Genesis 3, back to the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve reach for the forbidden fruit, feel their eyes open, and suddenly want to cover up. That turn from openness to hiding is more than a Bible story. It’s a mirror for shame, fear, and the way we try to manage our image when we don’t feel safe being known.

We slow down and listen to God’s voice walking in the cool of the day, not asking for coordinates but for honesty. Where did your heart go? What are you carrying? What have you been telling yourself about God? We connect that moment to everyday life, like a child hiding after a mistake, and we name the hard truth: we often avoid the very One who can heal us. Along the way, we explore how misconceptions, past wounds, and a broken world can shape our choices and distort our vision.

Then we link Genesis to Luke 15 and the prodigal son, waking up far from home and “coming to his senses.” The good news is that return is possible, and restoration is real. We end with a simple nightly prayer that works like a spiritual check-in: “Oh my heart, where have you been today?” If you’ve been drifting, numb, defensive, or tired, this is a gentle place to start. Subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review, and tell us: when you hear “Where are you?”, what comes up first?

Join us!   Facebook   |   Instagram   |   www.clcelkriver.org

Transcript

Adam And Eve In The Garden

God’s Question Where Are You

The Prodigal Son Wakes Up

A Night Prayer For The Heart

Share The Show And Join Us

SPEAKER_00 0:16

What is up everybody? Hey, this is Ryan. Welcome to our Reflections podcast. Hey, there's a story. I look, first of all, I just I should just say I love the book of Genesis. I'm a huge Jesus guy. I love the Jesus stories, but so let's say outside of that, my favorite book in the whole Bible is Genesis. I love it. It has some of the most profound stories you'll ever read, I think, in literature. They're I'm like they're endless in terms of how you can unpack them, and they're just layered and there's incredibly rich symbolism and metaphor and deep, deep truths. And so I love it. And Genesis 1, 2, and 3, it's the Adam and Eve story, the garden, the serpent, the fruit, and the forbidden fruit. Profound stories. And um so I want to I want to tell you one line out of Genesis 3 that I think is incredibly important to just sort of ask today. So here's the background of the story. So God makes Adam and Eve and He puts them in this garden, and a garden is a thriving place for life. In Genesis 2, you get this sense that that um there's all it's like an oasis in the middle of this desert place. There's water that comes out of the ground. It's beautiful. The humans have enough to eat. They're fully, you know, secure in in everything. And God is with them and dwells with them. And then God does say, hey, this tree over here, don't eat from this tree. It's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And doesn't really say why. It's just like don't eat of this tree. Anything else you can eat. And lo and behold, you probably know the story, even just from cultural retellings, but they eat of the fruit. And here's what happens: it's it's a profound story. So they eat of the fruit, and um, their eyes, the text is their eyes are opened, which means that before they ate of this fruit, and before they, I guess, received this knowledge of good and evil, their eyes were somehow closed. Not probably literally, but like some way their eyes were closed and now they're open. And it says they realize now that they were naked. So they were naked before, but didn't care, which sounds awesome. I mean, I just cruising around naked with no shame, no cares in the world, not worried about what to wear that day. It sounds like heaven, you know? Anyway, they they sew some fig leaves together and they cover themselves. And you see the beginning, you do the beginning, like the roots of shame. Like, hey, we're embarrassed and we see it, and this is somehow wrong or or inappropriate or forbidden or something like that. And so let's cover it up. And so then uh it says this then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And so God is sort of somehow, I don't know how it looked or what was going on, but God is somehow walking in the garden. They call this in the fancy sort of language anthropomorphism, like when you give an inanimate character, not that God is inanimate, but um, you give God like human features, like God doesn't have legs, but in this story he walks around like a human kind of, and so it's just part of the story. But either way, they hear God coming, and the text says they hid from him, which is powerful. Like, why'd they hide from him? Like, why would you hide from God? They disobeyed what he said to uh to do or to not do, and they ate from the tree. And um, if you ask me, the the only person who can now help them is probably God. It's like when a kid gets in trouble, like you've ever punished your kid, and uh generally the kid will often run and hide. I had my daughter one time, she broke this toy that I had. I wasn't even mad about it, and I come home and and my and she's gone. I'm like, where's Addison? And my family's like, she's hiding in the bedroom because she broke your toy and she's afraid you're gonna be mad at her. I'm like, be mad at her? Why do we be mad at her? It was an accident, you know. And I thought it was interesting, like the only person who can help her is me, and she's hiding from me, you know. So they they they hide from God. And then it says this, here's the line, here's the question that I would love to just have you here, and one that we could ask ourselves throughout the day today, and maybe every day, I don't know. But it says that uh the Lord calls to them and God says, Hey, uh I added the hay part. He says, Hey, where are you? I love that. I love that. Where are you? I mean, it's look, it's God. He doesn't need he doesn't not know where they are geographically, he knows where they are, he could see them. If God knows all things, if God is everywhere, this kind of language, these are things we talk about when we talk about God, then God is not confused about where they're hiding. He would know they were hiding. But what if God wasn't asking them a geography question? What if he's asking them a deeper, sort of existential or emotional, or I don't know, spiritual kind of a question? Like, where did you go? Where are you? What happened? And even embedded within that, you can kind of hear things like what where did you what happened when this when you ate of this fruit why are you hiding from me? Uh why do you feel like there's this need to hide? Where are you? Man, I love that question, you know. And then I went and found my daughter in the bedroom and she was hiding under these blankets. I just peeled these blankets off of her and she's under there sweaty and crying. And I'm like, honey, what's going on? And I love that God asks them this. It's all on it's got many layers. One I think is he's asking them, like, where did you go? Like, where are you now? Um where did you wander away? What uh how far off the path are you? Uh, where did your heart go? What's what are the why are you ashamed, you know, all these things? And and um, I I think it's also like an olive branch like of reconnection from God. Like, hey, let's have a conversation, what's going on, you know? And and uh I think about the lost son too, and that story that Jesus tells when the lost son, if you want to read it in Luke, but he uh he takes his father's inheritance and like kind of flips a middle finger to the whole community and takes the money and runs. And then it says later, after he spends all the money on wild living, it says he wakes up in this like a pig sty. And he's a Jewish kid, so he's in the worst possible way. He wakes up in this pig, you know, this pig farmer's pig sty. And he it says in it in the text, he comes to his senses. Like, yeah, he he woke up and was like, what am I doing out here? And I wonder if maybe he didn't ask himself or heard the father asking him or God. I don't know, I'm just reading into the text here, but like, where did you go, young man? Where are you now? Where are you? And so I think it'd be good for us to ask this question like, where are you today? And where have you gone? In what ways have you gone off the path? And what ways are you hiding from God, the the God who can only help you and heal you? I think most of the times we make bad decisions, it's because of past wounds or misconceptions about God or other people, or seeing incorrectly and um, or just are like a part of this whole huge system that is just broken and has all kinds of missing pieces. And and so, like, who can help us? Yeah, God. God is the one who can heal us and restore our vision and our place back at home. I love when the son comes back, he comes back home and the father welcomes him and throws him a big feast, and the other brother gets mad about it, and then the father tells him, Hey, dude, everything I have is yours. Um, you've always been my son. Because the other brother's mad that you never threw me and my friends a party. And he's like, Look, dude, everything I have is yours. Like what you're looking for, you already had all along. And uh he restores him back to being home again. I love that story. And so, yeah, many times we wander off the path and we wander away from home and wake up in this pig styre in some weird place. And I think it would be good of us to hear that that voice of God ask, Hey, where are you? Not as in like, where'd you go, you dummy? But I'm like, Where are you? Let me help you, let me find you. Come and come and be with me again. Let's walk in the cool of the day and we'll figure this out together. Yeah, so there's this ancient prayer that people would pray all the time. At night they would get together and they would pray this prayer, and they would just simply say, Oh my heart, where have you been today? So maybe today at the end of the day, you can sit down and whatever you do at night before bed, if you pray or read the Bible, or just think or journey. Maybe ask yourself, yeah, oh my heart, where have you been today? Where are we? Alright, love you guys. Peace. Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends. And don't forget you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River at 8 30, which is our liturgical gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering. Or you can check us out online at clcelkriver.org. Peace.