Day 15: Shame in the Wilderness

“When the woman saw that the tree was good for food… a delight to the eyes, and desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.” Have you ever judged something to be good that God called evil, and had to wrestle through the kind of submission that makes no sense? Or, in the wrestling, have you failed miserably and simply rebelled against God? If you’re anything like me, you’ve had times of victory and defeat. When I’ve fallen short, whether in rebelling against God or making an idol of something He created, I always end up in the same place. I find myself in the wilderness of shame.

In this passage, we see the garden become a wilderness simply because of the decisions of those who live in it. How often is the same true of us? I know for me, there are times where I have the ability to live in a garden and I am choosing to stay in the wilderness, because shame feels safer than confession. During the times when my journey out of sin has been messy and non-linear, I coped by letting pride and shame lie to me as I spent weeks listening to satan instead of the scriptures. I have meditated on my sin instead of the cross, and like Adam and Eve, I hide myself from the presence of the God who has only ever loved me.

Yet, I see faith in this story as well. Adam and Eve don’t stay silent. They tell the Lord where they are at, and confess what they have done. It takes faith to confess our sin to the Lord and believe that we will be received by Him in love. That faith leads them out of the wilderness of shame, back into the arms of God.

If we have the same faith to come out of hiding and uncover the parts of us that feel too vulnerable to share, we will be met by a loving Father, Friend, and Savior. In the times that I have been bold enough to have faith that my sin was truly paid for, I have been rescued from that wilderness and delivered back into a garden.

Every morning brings new mercies. When I look at my life and pay more attention to my sin than the God who handled it, I spiral into shame and hide from the Lord. When I recognize the reality of my sin, but choose to dwell on what God says about me and his finished work on the cross, I am filled with a hope that drives back the darkness. When we, like Adam and Eve, find ourselves marinating in an internal wilderness of shame, may we remember that the hope of God will bring us back to the garden.


PRAY:
Jesus, help me to believe in what you have said and who you are. Help me not to rely on my own understanding of what I can see, but to submit to your perfect knowledge of how and who you created me to be. Thank you that where my sins are many, your mercy is more. As I continue a flawed walk with you, fill me with hope that the work of Jesus on the cross truly is enough to set me free of shame. Amen.