I was sitting in a coffee shop in Denver, Colorado one evening not too long ago and hanging on the dimly lit wall on my left was a replica of Michelangelo’s painting of the Sistine Chapel. What a beautiful work of art! It was the segment in which God is reaching out to Adam. We’ve all seen it… Adam sits comfortably sort of casually laying out naked on what seems to be a grassy hill. The God of creation is stretching his entire body to reach Adam. In fact, His faithful angels seem to be holding him back lest he falls. Adam, however, has his arm lazily perched on his knee. His index finger is bent, his body almost sprawled out. The look on his face is one of apathy, of contentment, of comfort.
I saw the painting in a way that I had never seen it before. For some reason it just struck me. In my head, I began to morph Adam’s face to look like mine… yours… the rude old lady at the grocery store… Mother Theresa… the Apostle Paul… Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You see, all of humanity echoes Adam’s pride… his fervency to please himself. For, “we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)
It makes us wonder, Does Adam even want to be with God?
As I was sitting in that coffee shop, I just began to ache. Who am I? What have I been doing my whole life? God has stretched Himself out as much as He is willing to… not just to the point of exhaustion, but to the point of death… just to reach me. All the while, I’ve simply been lackadaisically lounging toward God… rather than lunging toward Him. I’ve been concerned about my comfort first and foremost. We all share this curse with Adam.
The good news is, God still stretches out to meet us! He wants us… He loves us.
I left the coffee shop that evening with a mental image of Michelangelo’s painting etched in my brain. I could not stop thinking about it. The question that kept rapping my mind was Why doesn’t God simply grab Adam? This question has not only puzzled those of us in the Church, but it has also become the thesis for many atheists. Why doesn’t God, if He is an omniscient and omnipotent god, why doesn’t He stretch out His all powerful arms and take hold of Adam? Why must he wait for Adam to reach out on his own?
Marriage provides a wonderful illustration that gives us the answer to all of these questions. I will answer this question as Jesus would… with another question: What kind of husband wants his wife to be mechanically, purposefully engineered to love him? Not a good one. Instead, a good husband would want his wife to be personally, intimately, and passionately in love with him. This pure love results in servitude… selfless, loving servitude.
The Church is the bride of Christ. God loves the Church as a groom loves his bride. God wants for His bride to be in love with Him enough to serve Him. He does not want to force us into submission or coerce us into slavery. For the very essence of love is one giving his desires to do the will of another. That is love. God is Love. God gave us a brain and with that brain we have the ability to make choices. We can choose to be with Him, to serve Him, to have and to hold Him for richer or poorer. Or we can choose to disown Him and do what we want to do. This is the blessing and curse of free will.
Therefore, we have to take action. It takes no faith to want to do something, but it takes much faith to do it. If we decide to ingest Christ’s blood, we must reach out to Him. We must do our part in this relationship. We, as believers, must do what it takes to meet our Savior. He will not come one hundred percent of the way… He loves us too much. He may come 99.9999% of the way, but he desires for us to desire Him enough to meet Him.
