By Rev. Anders Nelson
Mabel-Henrytown Tri-Point Parish – Mabel First Lutheran Church, Scheie Lutheran Church and Henrytown Lutheran Church
In the last few weeks, I’ve started a new Bible study with my three congregations and we’ve chosen to start those sessions with a whirlwind tour of the Bible. This tour is focused on a 10,000-foot view of the Bible, highlighting important moments in the larger story of God’s people throughout scripture and drawing some initial connections between these stories before we dive into other portions of scripture with more precision and focus. As is true with any good read-through, we started at the very beginning, which I’ve heard is a very good place to start.
We took the time to stop and actually read the first parts of this first creation account to highlight the differences in our different translations (a helpful aspect of a Bible study to hear different meanings behind the original Hebrew and Greek). In our reading of the first words of the first creation account in Genesis, I was reminded of one of the important phrases used in this first passage of the whole of Christian scripture: as God creates the various pieces of creation, before each day ends with evening and morning, God sees that the created thing is good. Eventually, after all of creation is made, God calls the whole of creation very good!
At the outset of the whole of scripture, at the outset of all of creation, at the outset of all of time, God calls the created world very good, an affirmation that echoes throughout time, throughout creation, throughout scripture to arrive to us, too.
More often than not, I’ve noticed that our collective recollection of creation is more focused on what happens in the Garden of Eden as Adam and Eve eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This focus would ground us in a sense of the mistakes of creation, the errors of humanity, and the fallout of such an event. But before that, before God’s people begin to stumble their way through history by trying to be faithful to their God who loves them, God begins the story of the world with words of affirmation, affirming the goodness of all that was crafted by our Creator’s hands.
In a world that more swiftly affirms the ways in which we make mistakes or the ways in which our sinfulness takes center stage before our belovedness or goodness, may this reminder of God’s outlook on creation provide you a bolstering word this day. May you cling to the goodness inherent in you as you encounter the world around in its own goodness and loveliness. May you begin your days, dear reader, grounded in these words of affirmation and love for you and everything around you, for you are indeed created as good.
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