At the beginning of the story, there was a rare kind of freedom in the Garden.

In the biblical story, Adam and Eve walked through life without masks.
Without fear of being seen.
Without shame about who they were.

The Bible says they were naked and felt no shame.

I like to think it wasn’t only physical nakedness.
It was something even deeper.

They were spiritually naked.

Known.
Accepted.
Whole.

There was no need to hide anything.

When Knowledge Changed Everything

Then came the fruit.

The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.

And with it came something new: awareness.

Suddenly, they noticed something that had never frightened them before:

their limitations, their flaws, their imperfect humanity.

And something shifted within them.

What was once simply body became shame.

What was once transparency became fear.

The First Fig Leaves

Their first reaction was not to run toward God.

It was to hide.

They sewed fig leaves together to cover what now felt unacceptable.

It wasn’t just their bodies they were trying to cover.

It was fear.
It was guilt.
It was the feeling of no longer being worthy of being seen.

The God Who Walks in the Garden

The story tells something beautiful.

God walked in the Garden in the cool of the day.

It was a daily meeting. Familiar.
Expected.

But that day, something was different.

Adam and Eve were not in their usual place.

So God asked a simple question:

“Where are you?”

Not because He didn’t know.
But because they needed to answer.

The Leaves We Still Wear

Metaphorically speaking, perhaps we still wear fig leaves today.

Leaves made of: perfectionism,
control,
comparison,
apparent indifference.

Small layers we use to hide what we are afraid to reveal.

Fears.
Insecurities.
Shame.

Parts of ourselves we believe would not be accepted.

The Invitation of the Garden

But the Garden remains a place of encounter.

And the question still echoes:

“Where are you?”

It is not an accusation. But as an invitation.

An invitation to step out from behind the leaves.
To be seen again.

Because the same God who walks in the Garden is not startled by our humanity.

He has always been interested in something deeper:

relationship.

Perhaps the question is not only where we are physically.

Perhaps it is:

Where are we hiding?

And perhaps the way back to the Garden,
to the peace you are searching for, is not to fix yourself first.

It is simply to step out from behind the leaves.

Because peace begins
when you no longer need to hide.

Text: Priscila Sotana