by Donny Abbott on December 16, 2024
God is Longing to Love Us
In the book of Genesis, chapter three, we read about the fall of man. In this scene, Adam and Eve were convinced by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit. After they ate it, they became ashamed of their nakedness and went into hiding. Then the passage continues:
Toward evening they heard the Lord God walking about in the garden, so they hid themselves among the trees. (Genesis 3:8)
As God was walking in the cool of the day, He goes on to ask what I think is the most haunting question in all of Scripture:
The Lord God called to Adam, "Where are you?"
This is the first question that God asks in Scripture. And He’s asking it of the only man alive, who is now hiding in the bushes. In this situation with Adam, he wasn’t physically lost. God asked Adam the question to check on Adam’s spiritual location.
Where are you, Adam?
It’s almost as if you can hear the pain in God’s voice. In my mind, I picture God as the loving Father with His arms open wide, asking, “Where are you? Why have you strayed? I did everything that I could to provide you with a home, a wife, and everything you would need—I gave it to you.”
Where are you, Adam?
You get a feeling there is almost a longing for what used to be. This break in the relationship is also the beginning of a love story that still continues to unfold today—a divine romance of sorts where the Creator of the universe actively woos His creation.
All of the great stories throughout history have characters who long for something. In the great Lord of the Rings saga, the hobbit Bilbo Baggins mentions eighteen times how he longs to return home. In Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem Ulysses, the Greek hero longs for adventure, knowledge, and a return to his life at sea. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the monster longs for love and companionship. And in our Garden scene, God is longing too. The closeness that once existed in His relationship with Adam has now been broken.
The biblical narrative reads like an epic love story, where God repeatedly reaches out to humanity despite our wandering hearts. Through the prophets, we witness not an aloof deity, but a passionate God who expresses deep emotional vulnerability.
Perhaps the most poignant expression of God's longing comes from Jesus Himself, standing over Jerusalem, His heart breaking for His people. Here, Jesus laments:
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" (Matthew 23:37)
This powerful metaphor reveals the tender, protective nature of God's love—a mother hen's fierce devotion to her chicks, offering shelter, warmth, and safety under her wings.
This image of the mother hen is particularly striking because it shows us a God who makes Himself vulnerable in His love for us. A mother hen doesn't defend her chicks with sharp talons or a fearsome beak—she simply spreads her wings and offers herself as shelter, even at the cost of her own safety. Isn't this precisely what God did in the Incarnation, when divine love took on flesh and dwelt among us?
The Advent season reminds us that God's longing for humanity reached its crescendo in the sending of His Son. The Incarnation wasn't a divine afterthought but the culmination of God's persistent love story with humanity. In Jesus, we see God's love made tangible—divine longing wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. The cosmic truth of Christmas is that God's yearning for a relationship with us was so intense that He crossed the infinite distance between heaven and earth to make it possible.
How extraordinary is it that the God who spoke galaxies into existence, who set the stars in their courses and keeps the planets spinning in their orbits—this God longs for a relationship with you. Not duty, not mere obedience, but intimate fellowship. He wants to gather you close, to shelter you under His wings, to whisper His love over you.
Throughout human history, we see this pattern of divine initiative—God consistently reaching out, pursuing, and wooing His people back to Himself. From walking in the garden with Adam and Eve to establishing covenants with Abraham and his descendants to sending prophet after prophet with messages of both warning and welcome, God has never stopped pursuing humanity.
This pursuit culminated in the first Advent, when God's longing took human form in Jesus Christ. The baby in the manger was the physical embodiment of divine desire for reconciliation with humanity. As we begin this Advent season, we're invited to pause and consider this astounding truth: the God of the universe longs for a relationship with us so much that He was willing to become one of us.
The manger scene we have set up in our homes isn't just a sentimental holiday decoration—it's a profound testament to divine longing. Each figure in the nativity tells part of the story of God's relentless love: Mary's willing surrender to divine purpose, Joseph's faithful obedience, the shepherds' wide-eyed wonder, the wise men's determined seeking. At the center of it all lies the infant Jesus, God's longing made flesh, divine love wrapped in human skin.
As we celebrate this Advent season, let us remember that we worship a God who longs for us, who actively seeks us out to bring us back to Himself. The Christmas story isn't just about what happened in Bethlehem two thousand years ago—it's about God's ongoing desire to gather us and restore us to the relationship we were created for.
This Advent, may we respond to this divine longing. May we recognize that the God who carved the canyons and filled the oceans is the same God who tenderly seeks a relationship with each of us, calling us back to His heart with unwavering love.
