I was talking to some my friends the other day reading the Bible in a year. I expressed my failed attempts in the past, and also my annoyance with re-reading through Genesis again! I mean seriously, how many times have I read that one book and failed to even touch some of the others? I want to read the Bible in a year, but can I skip the books I have already studied?
It’s not that I don’t understand the importance of God’s word, nor do I negate the fact that new revelation comes with every reading; I simply want to accomplish this task and I fear that if I spend time reading that which I have already read, I won’t have steam to read the new books. Sounds really silly when I type it out, but that was my faulty logic when I was discussing these things with some friends the other day. Regardless of any fear or hesitation I had, I signed up for the Bible in a Year and God blew me out of the water on day one.
No matter how many times I have read Genesis, I am convinced I have never seen or registered the following verse:
Genesis 3:21- Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. (NKJV)
We should all know the pretext of this scripture: it’s after Eve and Adam eat of the forbidden fruit and are punished for their actions. As they are about to be taken out of Eden, the author of Genesis slips in this verse and it speaks volumes about the LOVE, I mean PURE LOVE, that God has for His creation. He clothed them. Even after they did what He told them not to do; after they chose a path He hadn’t planned for them, which lead them to comprehend and feel shame for their nakedness. HE STILL CLOTHED THEM. God made clothes for the beings He planned to be naked, and put them on their beautiful hand-made bodies, and in doing so He shows a love that I can’t understand.
Imagine how heartbroken God must have been to see that the one creation He made to resemble His image had chosen a path that was apart from Him. How sad to think that His plans for Adam and Eve (and all of us) were to walk intimately with Him, and He gave them everything He could offer, except the fruit from one tree. They chose that tree, and a life apart from God. But even after that chose, HE STILL CLOTHED THEM. This small action, to me, is the first step toward the Cross. In covering Adam and Eve with clothes, God is setting us all up to be covered and cloaked in the BLOOD of Jesus.
He still loves me, even when I do what He told me not to do. He has clothes ready to place on my body, and THAT love is so wild, I can’t believe I get to experience it everyday.
