‘Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you.’ – Kahlil Gilbran (Sand and Fog)
From the beginning, we lived in the presence of greatness. We lived under the constancy of light but we barely understood what it meant. We lived with great provision without realising the character of the Provider. We were treated as sons and daughters by the Master, when really we were still slaves.
Slaves not to Him, but to ourselves. Slaves to fear, to darkness, to false truths. Slaves to our own bodies, created for a wide open lives but squashed into terrifyingly small spaces. We lived in the presence of completeness, of wholeness and yet we never grasped the fullness of it. Our slavery led us away from the light until we were so far away from the original intention of our being, we were cast out into the darkness and the light longed for us, called out to us but was not with us as the Light had been.
You see, we share it in, equal parts, the slavery that led Adam and Eve, the first man and woman into abandoning the presence. We share in the same humanity that led us to suspicion and distrust of the only Loving Father we had ever known. We choose to walk in opposition to the only thing asked of us and we walked straight into the darkness, the bloodiness of human history.
Adam, from the word “Adama”, literally named of the earth, chose slavery over freedom, and cast out from the garden, walked onto the earth to cover it with bloodshed. The very blood which gives us life, became our undoing, our brokenheartedness, the scar of our history on this earth… acres and acres of bloodsoaked earth.
But we weren’t left alone out here. In fact, God barely left us for a minute before redrawing the path, the Way back to Him.
Time and time again, he re-drew it in the earth, the sky, through the history of humanity as it poured out its story on to the planet. And still it faded from our view because we so easily turned our eyes. We washed out the path with dirt, blood, greed.
Again and again, He, the great Father, used his own hand to lead us back to him and our history of words and stories is the history of our enslavement and our freedom, being captured and set free, choosing entrapment and crying out for salvation again.
We still live in the Presence. His light is all over us, the footsteps of the Way before our eyes. Through blood and war, peace and beauty He still points out the Way and welcomes travellers onto it. Whatever you do, once you find the Way, don’t lose it as so many are prone to do.
We are still sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, still making our way through the human story and wandering the earth. Hold to the constancy of light, the character of our Father, do not take your eyes from His hand drawing us home. Don’t lose the Way.