God’s Heart for Humanity

When my granddaughter Stella was a toddler, she wasn’t very good at playing hide and seek. She would hide in plain view and say, “Papa, find me!” Meanwhile, I’d be looking right at her.

I’d say, “Stella! I can’t find Stella! Where is Stella?”

She would jump out, laugh, and then go back to the same hiding place again. I played along with Stella to humor her.

In the Garden of Eden when God called out to His wayward son, “Adam, where are you?” was He oblivious to the whereabouts of Adam? Of course not. God knew exactly where he was. He was saying, in effect, “Adam, I miss our times together. Adam, why did you eat of the forbidden fruit? Adam, why are you hiding from Me? Adam, I want to talk with you.”

That is the heart of God. He says in Isaiah 1:18, “Come now, and let us reason together. . . . Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

If you want to see how God feels about this world, look at the trio of stories Jesus told in Luke 15. God is compared to a woman who lost a coin, a shepherd who lost a sheep, and a father who lost a son.

If we learn nothing else in the Bible, we learn that God loves humanity and longs for fellowship and friendship with us. We learn that God doesn’t want any person to go to Hell, and the best evidence of this is that He poured His wrath on His Son, who had never committed a single sin, so that we could be pardoned.

God searches for us. He cares for us. And He wants us to know Him.