Have you recently experienced that heart sinking shame, regret and perhaps embarrassment of 'What have I done?!' You wish you could turn the clock back. You wake in the morning filled with the misery of the memory of what you did.
What can you do now?
You cannot undo what was done. Countless questions and self-analysing as to why you did it do not make you feel any better.
All you can do is to slowly start picking up the pieces. To say sorry and ask for forgiveness where you can. Accept that you might be met with stony anger or refusal to hear you.
They say time is a great healer - you just wish it wasn't so slow. They say that while there is life there is hope, and so ... that is all you can do. Hope.
But perhaps rather than one specific event of regret, as you look about you - at your life - at your appearance - at your surroundings - you generally think, 'What have I done?!' You feel full of shame, regret, remorse - hopeless. It seems impossible to put things right. Years of wrongdoing have left their mark.
One day God will ask us this question in regard to our life - the life he has given us. And what will we say?
Let me tell you a story - a true story:
There was once the most beautiful garden. It was full of newly sown plants and trees of every kind imaginable. The days were warm and balmy, each day fresh and new with the dew that came down overnight.
This garden was paradise.
All was harmonious and peace. Animals and humans lived side by side without fear - and we wonder if they were even able to talk to each other.
The man and his wife who were blessed to live in this paradise had the daily enjoyment of tending to the plants around them - their task was not difficult, not back breaking, not sweat inducing - it was pleasant and companionable. They were so well suited - made for each other.
This garden was a most special place, for in it the presence of it's designer - it's Creator - was heard and felt walking through the garden, delighting in His creation - and the company of the man and his wife.
The presence of the Creator can hardly be described - it was the very essence of love, peace, wisdom, kindness and purity - it was the most satisfying and fulfilling presence that could be known - but it was also a majestic and powerful presence, which one day the man and woman suddenly feared.
They 'hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden' (Genesis 3:8).
Why did they try to hide from God?
The man and his wife, Adam and Eve, had eaten of the forbidden fruit which gave them an understanding of what was good and bad - they immediately knew they had done wrong in disobeying God. They felt ashamed of their nakedness. They felt guilty. They tried inadequately to cover up their nakedness with fig leaves which they had sewn together. And then when they heard God in the garden, they hid.
We too try to hide from God now -when we think about death, about whether there really is a God who we will have to meet, when we think about all those conscience niggles of things we did that we shouldn't really have done - we bury these thoughts in distraction and life. We don't expect to die yet! There is always another day.
As Christians we also sometimes try to hide from God. We sin and do things that we feel we know better than to do. We feel ashamed - especially if it something we have had to ask God to forgive us for before. How can we come and ask him for forgiveness again?! Our shame and sin is like a barrier between us and our dear Lord. We no longer feel a freeness as we try to pray to him.
God knew what Adam and Eve had done. And God knows all about your life too. He knows if you currently just want to pull the sheet over your head when you wake up. He knows what we will go on to do before we have even done it! But God asks us to tell him.
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God called Adam and asked where he was, and then, 'Who told thee thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree... What is this that thou hast done?' (Genesis 3:9,11,13)
A few verses on when Cain kills Abel and God asks him where Abel is, Cain insolently answers. God shows he already knows, when he says, 'What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.' (Genesis 4:10).
The punishment for Adam and Eve was to be driven out from the garden. No longer were they to be able to enjoy their pleasant work of tending to it. Instead they were cursed - the ground grew thorns and thistles, Adam would sweat and toil over it to grow themselves food, Eve would experience the immense pains of childbirth and be under her husband's leadership. And one day they would both die.
The punishment of Cain was to be driven out of God's presence to wander the earth. No longer would he enjoy the fruits of his farming, but he would be a 'fugitive and vagabond'. And then he too would die.
We suffer punishment for our wrongdoings by the consequences - perhaps even imprisonment or fines, and one day we too will die.
But how will God punish us for the wrongs we have done?
Will it be eternal misery and hell - separation from God?
Or have our sins already been wiped out - the punishment suffered by God himself in the form of his dear Son, Jesus?
God is unspeakably kind, dear reader. We see it in the above story - although Adam and Eve had to suffer the consequences of what they had done God kindly made them proper clothes to substitute their poor attempts to cover themselves with fig leaves. And Cain - he protected him from being killed by those who Cain feared would take vengeance on him.
Just as God came to Adam and Eve and Cain and asked, 'What have you done?' may we be helped to answer him as he too asks us - as we feel him ask us in the shame and regret that we are experiencing.
Let us tell him all about it- he knows anyway - pour it all out, tell him everything. And ask him to forgive you, for Jesus' sake. If you genuinely ask him, believing in him with all your heart, he will forgive you dear friend.
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