“That’s a Good Word!”
December 2, First Monday of Advent
Genesis 1-2
Light first purple candle - The Hope Candle
I don’t like reading directions. I remember one year for Father’s Day, the kids and I decided that what Dale wanted more than life itself was a foosball table. (I still stand behind that inspiration, even though Dale rarely, if ever, played foosball before or after we gave him that fantastic gift!) So, we went to Costco where we had seen the gleaming foosball table and bought it. The problem was that it came in a box with about a million parts and I (who don’t do directions) and my helpers (children ages 3-9) needed to get this thing put together in record time in order to surprise Dale on his big day.
It didn’t take long for the kids to become disinterested and I was left with all of these pieces to put together to create this gift for Dale on my own. Throughout the process, I would look at pieces, put them where I thought they should go, and move on. It took me six hours, but I finally finished. I was so proud of myself, until I saw this extra piece lying on the floor. Deciding that the table looked great and determined to be finished, I threw that piece away, with all of the other trash. Out of sight, out of mind, right?
As you can imagine, it was an important piece that helped keep the foosball field level. It was never right, all because I refused to follow the detailed directions that were right there in the box.
The book of Genesis opens with a majestic description of how God first created the heavens and earth and then how He ordered the earth so that it might become His dwelling place. There is only one God, in Three Persons, the blessed Trinity whose Word is almighty. He has only to speak and the world comes into existence. And afterwards, He doesn’t see an extra piece lying around and tosses it. No, at the end of each day, He looks at what He made and says, “Now That’s a Good Word. Exactly how I designed it.”
Read aloud Genesis 1-2:3, as if you are reading it for the first time.
God spoke and things happened! Creatures, landforms, stars, moons, water and land all came into existence purely by His spoken Word. John 1:1-3 claims that Jesus was and is the Word who was with God in the beginning. “All things were created by Him and apart from Him not one thing was created.” (Jn. 1:3) In his letter to the Colossian christians Paul continues to confirm Jesus as the creative Word of God. He is the “image of the invisible God,” “the firstborn over all creation,” who created everything. Not only were all things created by and for Jesus, the Word, but He holds them all together!
During the first three days of creation, the Word was doing a lot of infrastructure work - creating light, separating the light from the darkness, the waters by creating the atmosphere. But when He gathered the waters under the sky into one space and dry land appeared, God had a specific plan and was pleased to watch it unfold. He began to get excited and declared, “That’s a Good Word!”
On Days 4 and 5, God really began showing off His wonders with animate creations - sea creatures and birds of every kind as well as creatures that crawl on dry land. God also blessed these creations that could move about and encouraged them to be fruitful, to multiply and to fill the waters, sky and land.
Then came Day 6 and God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness.” (Gen. 1:26a) God, in Trinitarian form - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - spoke man into existence as His “magnum opus,” His great work. Man would be fashioned in God’s own image, with the ability to create and cultivate, to think and reason, with a range of emotions to reflect His male and female characteristics. Why did God create man? To steward all of the other members of God’s vast creation, yes, but it was more than that. God created man for relationship. We are relational beings and reflect our Maker’s image most fully when we are relationally engaged with family, community, His church and most importantly, Him. At the end of that big Day 6, God sat back, looked at how everything had come together and proclaimed, “Now That’s a Very Good Word!”
Sing the first two verses and chorus of O Come, O Come Emmanuel:
1 O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.
Refrain:
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to you, O Israel.
2 O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o'er the grave. Refrain
Reflect - Our understanding of the account of creation is foundational to our theology of God, which is why we begin our Advent practice with the Beginning. The unity of the Trinity, His almighty power, His perfection and purposefulness, His care for all of His creation, provide the fundamental presuppositions for the rest of Scripture. Let’s be careful to start at the beginning and appreciate how every piece of God’s plan has a specific purpose, including how He rested on Day 7. God’s intentionality in resting on that last day of Creation was not to catch His breath, sleep in or refresh His mind. His resting on that last day gave greater meaning to the work He had done the previous six. The rest at the end created a beautiful melody that otherwise would have been a jumble of musical notes, a flurry of unending activity. Rest gives significance to music, work and words.
Pray and thank God for His intentional love displayed towards us through His creation.
Blessings,
Gay B Brown