Who told you that you were naked?

I enjoy Jon Acuff's Stuff Christians Like, but I particularly like serious Wednesdays. Today, he discusses  Genesis 3:11, where God is speaking with Adam and Eve, asking the question "who told you that you were naked?" 

He writes,

To me, this is one of the saddest and most profoundly beautiful verses in the entire Bible. Adam and Eve have fallen. The apple is a core. The snake has spoken. The dream appears crushed. As they hide from God under clothes they’ve hastily sewn together, He appears and asks them a simple question:

“Who told you that you were naked?”

There is hurt in God’s voice as He asks this question, but there is also a deep sadness, the sense of a father holding a daughter that has for the first time ever, wrapped herself in shame.

Who told you that you were not enough?
Who told you that I didn’t love you?
Who told you that there was something outside of me you needed?
Who told you that you were ugly?
Who told you that your dream was foolish?
Who told you that you would never have a child?
Who told you that you would never be a father?
Who told you that you weren’t a good mother?
Who told you that without a job you aren’t worth anything?
Who told you that you’ll never know love again?
Who told you that this was all there is?
Who told you that you were naked?

I don’t know when you discovered shame. I don’t know when you discovered that there were people who might think you are silly or dumb or not a good writer or a husband or a friend. I don’t know what lies you’ve been told by other people or maybe even by yourself.

But in response to what you are hearing from everyone else, God is still asking the question, “Who told you that you were naked?”

And He’s still asking us that question because we are not.
In Christ, we are not worthless.
In Christ, we are not hopeless.
In Christ, we are not dumb or ugly or forgotten.
In Christ, we are not naked.

Isaiah 61:10 says:
“For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness.”
The world may try to tell you a thousand different things today. You might close this post and hear a million declarations of who you are or who you’ll always be, but know this:

As unbelievable as it sounds, and as much as I never expected to type this sentence on this blog:

You are not naked.

He could not be hidden

And from there he arose and went to Tyre and Sidon. And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden.--Mark 7:24

This morning, I was pondering the question "was Jesus an introvert?" I am not sure that is the right question, though scripture seems clear he appreciated being away from the crowds at times. One of my favorite passages of scripture comes from Mark 1:35-37, "And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, 'Everyone is looking for you.'"  Jesus was not constantly ministering to large crowds. He was not always in the public eye. Sometimes, it appears he just liked to be alone.  In the Mark 1 passage, he went off by himself to pray even though, "everyone was looking for him." 

We certainly do not know all of the context with this passage from Mark 7, but I wonder if Jesus and the disciples had been ministering for a while and he wanted to take a break from it to recharge. They probably went to the house of someone they knew in Tyre and Sidon, hoping to take a breather and recuperate before resuming ministry. I like to imagine that he just wanted to hang out with his friends--a retreat of sorts.  

No sooner had the come to the house than a woman, a Gentile woman, found him and pleaded with him to heal her daughter. I doubt that he was exasperated. I doubt that he was impatient. Rather, he questioned her and then tells her that her daughter has been healed. 

I wish my response would be that way more often. The older I get, the more I appreciate being alone or being just with family and close friends. When people show up at my door, my initial response is not always compassion, but exasperation. Just this week, I had someone show up and was initially irritated, but I pondered my reaction and was not pleased with it.  I have been praying, asking God for a compassion like Christ's. 

Daily Reading: Mark 7, Deuteronomy 2, 2 Corinthians 6, Revelation 18, Job 12, Psalm 9, Proverbs 9, 2 Chronicles 12, Hosea 6, Acts 19

Weekend round up-1/15/10

I read a lot every week and I often come across things that I think are worth sharing. This week, is no different, particularly in light of the current crisis in Haiti. I am going to try to post a "weekend round up" every week covering the posts that I found most useful and enlightening. I hope others can benefit from this as well.

1) Does God Hate Haiti? by Al Mohler--"A faithful Christian cannot accept the claim that God is a bystander in world events. The Bible clearly claims the sovereign rule of God over all his creation, all of the time. We have no right to claim that God was surprised by the earthquake in Haiti, or to allow that God could not have prevented it from happening."

This article has been receiving a lot of praise around the Christian blogosphere. Mohler has handled this subject quite compassionately when other Christian leaders have been much more indelicate.

2) Shaun Groves provides a Compassion International-give Haiti profile pic. I have it put on my facebook.

3) Tim Challies posts about the relevance of Neil Postman's work to the situation in Haiti. "Three days from now we will have moved on. Maybe it will take four or five. But honestly, after the weekend, few of us will ever think of Haiti again. The next news story will come along and Haiti will be relegated to history. But three days from now and a week from now, the situation in Haiti will be far worse than it is today. The devastation will be more complete. The pain will be greater. " I fear this is absolutely true. How many people really think much about the tsunami anymore?

4) Zach Nielsen links to pics of Haiti and the devastation there. May it break our hearts and move us to action.

5) Jared Wilson on laying down your life: "If I’m not prepared to jeopardise a friendship so that I can tell others about Christ, I can be fairly certain I won’t give up my life." There are many other good thoughts here as well.

6) A thousand 9/11's--Justin Taylor cites Charles Krauthammer on Haiti, "We have heard the estimates. If one of the middling estimates of 100,000 dead is true, that would translate on a per capita basis — it would have the societal effect — in the U.S. [as] the loss, the death, of 3 million Americans — in one day! … That is a thousand 9/11s in one day."

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