What Does God Sound Like?

These days I am reading Genesis for my devotionals.
We’re at the scene just about after Adam and Eve broke God’s commandment, and ate from the forbidden tree. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. (Gen. 3: 8)

Adam and Eve heard “the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden.” I read this three times, and had yet to stop and ponder over it some more before reading on. Something about this expression felt strangely familiar. I became fully engaged into the phrase: “the sound…of the Lord…walking in the garden…”



Eventually, my mind pulled open the childhood memories drawer. When I was in elementary, my dad used to go work in a foreign country for a couple months, to help provide for his family. We missed him a lot while he was away, and I cannot even begin to describe the excitement that filled the house when he was about to return! We knew what day he was going to get home (it was usually late evening).

I had a habit in which I think I never failed: I would go out in the balcony of our apartment - which was on the fourth floor, and wait there, in the dark, looking for the moment when his car turned unto our street. Those evenings I watched hundreds of cars come and go, but never grew tired. Whether sweating, or freezing, I waited, and waited, and waited for hours to see the lights I recognized. In some seasons, the rich foliage made it more difficult, but that did not prevent me for waiting there. I wanted to see him from as far as I could. I wanted to shorten the time of separation.

And surely enough, after every one of his long journeys, the much-expected and anticipated moment arrived. I knew the lights on our car; I knew his driving; the way he turned around a corner; his usual speed on that street; his parking, everything! I knew the sound of his car door being closed. Then, after he had gotten out of the car, (I could only judge by the closed door, because I could not see his figure from up there), I rushed to the apartment‘s entrance door, and waited for him to climb the four staircases.


I knew his pace like I knew whom I belonged to. And when I had calculated he was about to reach the fourth set of stairs (from where he could see me), I opened wide the door with an enormous smile on my face, and glitter in my eyes, and greeted him from the threshold of our house with these words: “You’ve arrived!!”

These moments are so vivid in my mind, that I felt as if I’ve just lived them as I remembered them!

After cherishing the vision of the past, my thoughts returned to the story in the Bible. How amazing is it that Adam and Eve had grown so intimate with God that they recognized his pace? … His sound? … His presence? That they knew “the sound of the Lord walking in the garden”?

What does God sound like to me?
And what does it sound like to you?
How do we recognize his presence?
How do we know “his footsteps”?

In Genesis - the first book of the Bible, we find Him walking in Adam and Eve’s garden-home to meet them.
In Revelation - the last book of the Bible, we discover a God still in our midst, still walking among us. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone "like a son of man," dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. (Rev. 1:12-13)

God has never stopped walking among us.
Whether on dry land or on water, amid the morning shadows, or hidden in the mid-day clouds, surrounded by the rainbow's colors, or in the evening breeze, on the freeway or in the back garden, whether noticed or not, God is still walking among us, yearning for communion with us. This was his original purpose in creating us, and it continues and will continue to be the desire of His heart.

And that is the God I believe in.