If you grew up in the church like I did, you probably grew up learning the story of the creation. We learned about the six days of creation, and how God rested on the seventh day. We learned what God made on each day. We learned that God created human beings in Their image. We learned that each day as God finished creating, They declared each thing good. But this week I’ve been contemplating one small word in the creation story: “very.” After God finishes creating humans on the sixth day, God looks at everything and declares it “very good.”
As I read the creation story again this week, that distinction seemed important. No longer is creation just good. Now that God is finished creating, it is very good. Looking up the word in Hebrew, I discovered the word does not simply mean “very.” It means exceedingly, abundantly. Creation is not just good. It is not just very good. It is exceedingly good. It is abundantly good. It’s no accident that the author of Genesis 1 included that word in verse 31. Each individual part of creation is good, but when God puts it all together it becomes abundantly good. The individual parts of creation are not meant to exist on their own. They all come together, working as one abundantly good creation. What makes creation abundantly good is the connection between all the parts.
I’ve heard many Christians say we don’t have to worry about the environment. They say we can do whatever we want with creation because God gave us “dominion” over it, that it is ours to use as we like, so we don’t have to care for the earth. But every time we harm a small part of creation, we destroy its abundant goodness. Creation is only abundantly good as a whole. Take away one part and the connection is broken, the inherent goodness is lost.
As I look at the earth today, the oceans filled with trash, the rivers filled with toxic waste, the air filled with smog, as I look at all the life we’ve destroyed, the forests cut down, the animals driven extinct, I mourn the loss of the goodness of God’s creation. The earth is not ours to destroy, it is ours to nurture and tend. Remember that we are part of creation, we depend on that connection as well. We rely on the earth to nourish us, and the more we destroy, the harder it becomes for us to survive as well. As the ones who were given responsibility to care for the rest of creation, it is our duty to care for the earth and work to restore the abundant goodness that God created. I pray that one day God may one day look down upon Their creation and once again declare “it is abundantly good.”
The Presbyterian Peacemaking Program provides a daily lectionary of scriptures based on themes of peace and peacemaking. Over the course of 2019-20 I’ll be basing some of my blogs on one or more of the scriptures from each week’s lectionary. If you would like to follow along in the lectionary with me, here are next week’s scriptures:
Sunday – Micah 2:1-13
Monday – Esther 9:20-32
Tuesday – Zechariah 8:14-19
Wednesday – Psalm 96
Thursday – John 8:31-36
Friday – Ephesians 4:1-16
Saturday – 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17