By David ReayMonday 5 Oct 2015LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read Genesis 1:1,26-27,31
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
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26 Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created human beings in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
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31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (NIV)
Whenever we make something, whether it be a cake or a poem, a friendship or a garden, we are delighted when we can truly say it is good. So we can scarcely imagine the delight God felt when he made the world. So often we get bogged down with trying to reconcile science and Scripture that we fail to see what is going on in the beginnings of time and the Bible. God is making something out of nothing and reckons it is absolutely marvelous. This is no sombre God working out some theological project whereby he makes something only to destroy it, whereby he makes people as a sort of laboratory experiment to see how things will turn out.
God is ‘over the moon’ at how good this world is. It is an act of love on his part. He wanted relationship beyond the Trinity. He wanted to lavish love on things and persons. The world is fashioned out of love, and since it comes from the imagination and work of God, then it is naturally good. True, it is now bent out of shape because of our own rebelling against God. But that doesn’t negate its essential worth. Just because a masterpiece of art is tarnished doesn’t make it other than great art.
True, this world can be a sad and violent place and we rightly long for an end to this dimension of life on earth. But perhaps the substance of our longings ought not to be the destruction of this earth but its renovation. Its recovery of the initial goodness. That won’t come simply by our own hard work, but can only be completed by the return of Jesus who will usher in the new heavens and new earth. All will truly be good again. The wears and tears of human waywardness will go and God can once more take undiminished delight in his good world. Till then, let’s not demean our world by itching for its destruction. Let’s enjoy what good there is in our world and realise that if God loves it, we can scarcely do less.
Blessings
David Reay