Genesis 3:8

8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. (ESV)

As soon as Adam and Eve committed the first earthly sin against God, one of the first things they did was hide. They hid because they were ashamed of their sin. And this is, first of all, redundant. It’s redundant because they hid from God to be apart from Him in their shame. But they had already separated themselves from God by their very sin.

Not only is it redundant, but it’s futile. It’s futile because hiding from God is impossible. There is nowhere to go where you can be apart from His presence. This is exactly what omnipresence means. He’s everywhere. As the saying goes, you can run, but you can’t hide. Anywhere. At all.

Psalm 139:7-8

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! (ESV)

The sad thing is that we actually manage to convince ourselves that if we hide, God won’t see our sin. And this is the real reason people try to hide from God, because God is light and He exposes our sin, so in our sin, we want to get as far away as possible from that light lest anyone, even God Himself, sees our sin.

John 3:19

19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. (ESV)

That’s why Adam and Eve hid. After their taste of sin, they thought they could hide their shame in the darkness, away from the presence of the Lord. But it just doesn’t work that way…

Psalm 139:11-12

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you. (ESV)