What We Were Created For

"It's interesting how we often feel as if God's love is so elusive. If you're going to pick a single them that runs all the way through the Bible from beginning to end, it would have to be that the Bible is about human life with God.

That shapes the whole deal.

In the very beginning God creates the world and he makes the man and he makes the woman. Then we're told that 'the Lord God planted a garden in the east of Eden and there he put the man and woman he formed.' He plants a garden just so He would have a place to be with them.

It was always about being with. It was about intimacy.

We're told in Genesis 3, 'Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.' And we begin to get this idea that He would often just walk with them in the garden. Why? Because he wants to be with them.

One day God comes to earth. We're told in scripture, 'And they will call him Immanuel which means, God with us.' Now in Jesus the rest of the human race gets a little glimpse of what it's like to be with God. And we see that Jesus is with the people that nobody else wanted to be with. He's with the lepers, the sick, sinners and outcasts. He's with people and he's loving people that nobody else wanted to be with. He's with his disciples when they're stuck in a storm. He's with them when they make promises they can't keep.

And you wonder - what is He doing?

He's showing us that this love, His love, is no normal love. It's not a conditional love, it's not a temporary love. It's a love so high, so deep that we can't escape it. This love, His love, it's what we long for. It's what we were created for."

-Pete Wilson