“Who told you?”

My dad loved cars. New cars especially. He marveled at the new gadgets, loved the new designs, and reveled in the tight and precise handling of a new vehicle.

For a Pennsylvania farm boy that walked behind a mule and a plow, he esteemed what Detroit produced. (With the notable exception of a Ford. I remember when I showed up at a family gathering with Mary and the three kids in a new Mercury Sable station wagon. Suffice it to say that it was good I had grandchildren with me.)

Sam Wolgemuth had a tight grasp on how a car should sound, ride and handle. A little rattle in the cabin of the vehicle was amplified in his mind to unacceptable levels. He was tuned to the sounds of a healthy engine. And he loved a tight and comfortable ride. A car that was out of alignment was unacceptable. A little tug to the right or to the left couldn’t be tolerated. He was quick to point out the residual damage to the tires of a vehicle that had been left in misalignment. It grated against every car-loving fiber of his being.

Sam’s ability to discern a misaligned vehicle was not dependent on highly mechanized calibration equipment. He knew it. He felt it.

Driving a new car was the wonderful confluence of design and execution.

It’s this mindset that floods my mind and soul when I read these words in Genesis 3:11.

“Who told you that you were naked?”

It’s a question that God asked Adam and Eve after they cozied up to a snake.

Who told you?

Scripture is silent on the answer… but I tend to think that silence was the answer. The snake didn’t hiss out his pronouncement of their lack of clothing. The Bible doesn’t record that Adam and Eve informed each other. No, I tend to think that the pronouncement of their sinful decision came from an amplified voice coming from their own soul.

Once aligned with the design God had made, now a pothole of ego had devastated the steering. Adam and Eve didn’t need diagnostic equipment. They didn’t need Satan to update them, or an angel to pull them aside and whisper the truth to them… they knew it. Their heart and soul had screamed the truth. You are naked! You are out of alignment with God. The perfection of your design has been corrupted.

They just knew. And so do we. Our souls are wired for the Garden. Nothing else will be right. Nothing.

Some call it natural law. A built in sense of moral guidance. A hard wired perspective on right and wrong. But we know. We know what’s right.

Enter grace. The same soul that screams about our misalignment, can praise the merciful God that can restore us. The heart that confesses our nakedness can proclaim His enduring love.

What beautiful hope.

“Who told you?”

Condemnation surrenders to our redeemed identity… I belong to God. Aligned once again. I know it. I feel it. I celebrate it.