Happy Tuesday,

"It is better to live naked in truth than clothed in fantasy."
-some old guy


Directly after Adam and Eve fell into... (scratch that) walked into rebellion, the first thing they did was try and cover themselves. The now knew that they were naked. Up until that point they were naked as can be and had no idea that there was any alternative.

...she took the fruit and ate and gave it also to her husband with her, an he ate. And the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.
- Genesis 3.6-7

In eating the fruit/ rebelling against God, there were so many repercussions that came along with this one act. Fulfilling your selfish desires always does come with more than you bargained for. Adam and Eve were left without communication with God (or what they were used to), they now knew that they were naked, Adam would now have to struggle to get food from the ground, and Eve would have great pains during child birth (I think she got the worst of it by far).

How we benefit from our ancestors foul-up is we live under these same curses of sin. The most prevalant is the fact that we know we are naked and it has become second nature for us to scratch and claw our way to cover that fact up. To disguise it from the rest of the world and look as 'holy' as possible to everyone else.


Because we never lay hold of our nothingness before God, ad consequently, we never enter into the deepest reality of our relationship with Him. But when we accept ownership of our powerlessness and helplessness, when we acknowledge that we are paupers at the door of God's mercy, then God can make something beautiful our of us.
-Brennan Manning (The Ragamuffin Gospel)

The fact is, we are all naked under these clothes we are wearing. None of us are exempt from this. We all have vulnerabilities that we go to great lengths to hide everyday. Have you ever been around a person that is super-open about what they've done wrong this week? When they begin listing off the ways that they have sinned there is this weird uncomfortable feeling that just comes over you. Your thinking "T.M.I., T.M.I., T.M.I.!!!" (too much information incase you've never heard that).

Its almost like a cruel joke that Lucifer played on God. Lucifer knew the naked state of this 'new' creation and thought, in his wicked, wanting-to-get-back-at-God, bad attitude "I should ruin all this beauty." He knew that if he could get us focused on us we would lose sight of God. If we were consumed with covering up our faults and failures we would never be open with God or with eachother so he set out to through a wrench in the works.

I used to hear the phrase " Love is blind" and it always carried a negative connotation. I thought Love is blind so people do stupid things when they are 'in love' with someone else. Believe I still think that to be the truth. But I think there is a deeper meaning too that old adige. Adam and Eve walked with True Love. They lived in True Love and they were blind to all else.

Being 'in love' has a way of making everything else in life fade into the background. Everything that was important is now just secondary information. But all the things that didn't matter like flowers, sunsets and blue skies all become more clear, more vivid and more real than they ever where before.

Lets accept the fact that we aren't perfect and have uncountable vulnerabilities that haunt us daily. But lets also begin to fall 'in love' again. If God is love let us begin again to fall into his warm embrace and let all the things that once mattered take a back seat to His beauty. And let those things that we never noticed before become more real to us than we ever imagined.

"It is better to live naked in truth than clothed in fantasy."

Take care,
Pastor Chris