Eve... chosen, blessed and loved by God

I am really enjoying IF:Equip and the Bible selections that are studied and shared with so many women world wide.   What I enjoy so much about If is each day a passage of Scripture is selected.  There isn't a study guide.  Each person is invited to share in the blog's comments.  Comments range from questions trying to understand more fully to humble convictions pressed upon their heart by God or inspired words of insight.  It has been a beautiful thing to be reading the same portion of God's word with so many women world wide and read how it is impacting each person individually and growing them. There is a sense of community felt with these women although I have never met a single one of them.
Currently, the study is on women of the Bible.  This was the first week and of course, it started with Eve.  Today's study, left me quietly smiling and feeling very refreshed. This week, I have been blessed by the fresh perspectives being shared about Eve.  So often in my life, Eve is the cursed one.  The one who brought sin into the world.  She is remembered for all that she has done wrong.  This week there has been a thread of redemption being shared about Eve and it has been beautiful to "listen" in on these sharings.  Eve made a decision and it cost her much.  So very, very much.  While there were consequences, the ones so many can recite by memory, there is a thread of love and compassion right there in Genesis that seems to be so quickly read over and is unnoticed.  Eve still experienced the presence of God in her life afterwards.  There were consequences. Yet, God after declaring what would happen, stopped and took time to make coverings for Adam and Eve.  A lesson, maybe, for how to in the future.  Afterall, it isn't like they needed to before and this was something new for them.  Later, when she gives birth, she acknowledges God's provision in the form of Cain.  Even later, when Seth is born she acknowledges the gift God has given her in light of the loss she had experienced in losing Abel.  She made a mistake, yes.  But her mistake didn't alienate her from God.  It didn't define her.  Her relationship with God changed.  Most relationships change, often it takes something bad, to fully appreciate the good.  The bad gives us a reference point to understand why good is good.  It was the first of many mistakes, the first of many sins in a story of humanity that would lead us to Jesus.  Today, I am grateful for the women, who were able to see past Eve's mistake and see her as God saw her....a woman, loved and created by God, chosen, and blessed to be the first to experience God's love, forgiveness and promise for the future.  Blessed to hear Eve not "cursed" by her "daughters" for a mistake, but grace and understanding that sometimes choices are made and the future is affected, but there is a God that loves us so much, He provides redemeption and healing and restoration.

God is a gentleman

So I am reworking this post...
Cause that is what happens sometimes after I post and then I am taking my morning shower.
I get so much chat time with God and thinking done in the shower....

This past fall I kept hearing the same sentence over and over.. God is a gentleman.
I started thinking on it.  I had never thought of God as a Gentleman.  If God is a Gentleman... what does that look like?  Cause He isn't opening the car door for me.. He opens doors, but not the ones that are physical and attached to a building or a car.
So into my journey of examining God's character and what makes God a Gentleman.

Rewind several years, well maybe 16 or 17 years...
In parenting, I became intentional.  I longed to be able to teach my kids "rules" of life NOT because "I said so, but because God said so". I wanted to be able to direct them to His Word, to Him.

I discovered this company, Doorposts and their tools became invaluable.  You see I have this memory:

When I was a teenager, during one of the years my family never walked into a church, I picked up my Bible and started reading.  I was shocked and astounded.  Right there between the pages of Genesis and Revelations were instructions on how to behave. It was one of those years where law and the Constitution was being studied.  I had just no idea that the Bible was where it first happened.  I just thought all these rules of childhood were something parents created.  This discovery started a longing in my heart to know God's Word better.  

A few years into parenting, I wanted my children to know the principles we live by were created by God for our good.  Not for some selfish parental/adult reason to make life better.  

Now back in the present... I have been on a discovery journey of God's character.  Knowing who He is, but not being able to support it.  If God is a gentleman, then what does this look like.  I had read my Bible through one lens... what is it that I am suppose to be learning?  Now I started reading it through another lens, what does this say about God, His Character and The Kind of God He is?  This past year though, as I study His Word, I will come across a glorious and beautiful truth and then He will follow up that truth with this whisper to my heart..."This is another example of my character, of who I am and who I desire you to be."  It is easy to list of examples of good character. But that isn't enough for me.. I want to know where it is in Scripture. and He is showing me.  On this day, this verse jumped out at me as I worked through my Bible study book, Breathe:

And I started writing in my book.  

God waited.

Patiently waited 

6 days, 

He waited for the seventh day. 

He had an appointment, the Sabbath.  

He waited. 

He let them tend to life. 

But the time came and He called Moses.  

God was always there.  Present.  But not greedy of time and demanding more time.

Not selfish or self seeking wanting more time 

He was willing to wait.

He instructs us to seek Him.  To pray in all things.  To keep Him Lord and worship nothing else.  He is balanced and selfish and selfless. He calls us to work.  He calls us to rest.  He knows that as humans there are things we must tend.  We must eat.  We must care for others.  If He gives us these instructions, He recognizes it means our attention will inevitably be diverted from Him. He doesn't get jealous or demanding or impatient.  He awaits for the time He set aside for us to be with Him fully focused, Sabbath.  He doesn't even force us to show up to the appointment... free will... 

Feeling blessed that as I learn and grow in other areas, He doesn't forget this desire of mine to have Biblical evidence of His character.  He just keeps whispering to my heart..