Mistakes

“But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’  He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’” (Genesis 3:10).

The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise (Giovanni di Paolo)

The other day there was a mistake made at work.  It was noting catastrophic, but it was certainly annoying and a little embarrassing.

The first thing that generally happens when we make a mistake, is that we go into a bit of a panic – at least this is what the natural reaction can sometimes be.  After all, there is a sort of natural tendency to want to avoid being blamed for something that we have done wrong.  There is also a sort of tendency to want to avoid conflict and the problems associated with admitting that we have done things that are undesirable – even when those things have been done accidentally…

And what does this really mean?  Well, this means that we are constantly trying to duck for cover.  And that is an exhausting thing.

When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden and made a mistake, when they committed the Original Sin, their initial response was to hide from God and then try to deflect from their own culpability…

“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 they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’  He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’  And he said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?’  The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’  Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’  The woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” (Genesis 3:8-13).

And in that entire exchange, neither Adam nor Eve actually admitted that they had done the wrong thing.  What they did was the fault of another – Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent.  And yet, they must have understood that they were to blame, or why would they have been afraid of God?  Why would they have hidden if they had done nothing wrong?

And I have been thinking about this as I have been thinking about that today as I have been thinking about my Beloved.  For it seems to me that I spend so much of my time trying to run away from my mistakes, that I spend very little of it trying to atone for them.  And when I think of the example of Christ – Son of God – I am quite overcome,  Because God spent time atoning for mistakes that I had made – just to teach me how to do it, and still I am afraid and run away and try to pretend like it did not happen at all!

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.