Which “Where”?

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence? Psalm 139:7 NASB

Where – “Where are you?” Remember that question. Some manifestation of God walks in the Garden. Adam is hiding. Do you suppose God does not know where Adam is when He asks, “Where are you?” Of course not! The question is not a request for location. It is a question about expectation. “You should be here with Me. Why aren’t you here?” The Hebrew is ‘ay. It is almost always a rhetorical question. David uses the same expression in this psalm. No answer is expected. It is patently obvious that there is no place to run from God.

The other word for “where” in Hebrew is ‘epoh. It requires an answer about a location. “Where are the cookies?” is an ‘epoh question. “Where is God?” is not. The cookies are in the jar. God is everywhere.

But I often think of God in ‘epoh terms. I mistake these two words. The result is that I think God actually has a location. He’s off in heaven somewhere. Or He’s attending to some missionary in Zambia or a prayer meeting in Detroit. The point is this: He is not with me! Two results occur from my grammatical mistake. First, I act as if He is not with me. I do things I would never do in His presence because I use my grammatical mistake to pretend that He isn’t here. Oh, I know, cognitively at least, that He is right here watching, but my grammar gives me just that little bit of excuse that I need to imagine for the moment that He is looking somewhere else. Sin is a grammatical mistake.

The second result is my sense of being alone. Genesis tells us that it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, but I suspect Adam’s sense of being alone was also a grammatical mistake. Adam was never actually alone. He just thought he was. He thought God was somewhere else. As a result, he not only acted as if he were alone but he felt as if he were alone. Abandoned. Afraid. But read the story carefully and you will discover that he is not afraid of his guilt as a result of his sin. He is afraid because he now recognizes that he is alone with himself. He is no longer transparent Adam. He has become the serpent, a man with a hidden past and a second agenda. Alone is a grammatical mistake.

We are the products of our language. We see the world according to the linguistic structure of our culture. One word for snow or forty words for snow? One word for prayer or thirty words for prayer? It depends on where you live. And apparently our relationship with God also depends on “where.” Which “where” is yours?

Topical Index: where, ‘ay, ‘epoh, Psalm 139:7