It Will Be "Very Good"

Genesis 1, 2

Everything was new and different. Like a baby adjusting to the world outside the womb, every creature God made was making adjustments on those fifth and sixth days of God’s creative process.

Was chewing grass instinctive? What did it feel like to do it for the very first time? The discovery of all the senses and what they did must have been astonishing, like the sweetness of honey on the tongue.

Man shares with the animals his beginning even though he is distinct. “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air” —Genesis 2:19 and “…the Lord formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being” —Genesis 2:7.

Creation was in part accomplished through the process of separation. Darkness was separated from light (1:4), waters were separated from waters (1:6), water was separated from land (1:9), plants and trees were separated from each other into species, kinds (1:11), different lights were created to mark the change between day and night, summer and winter (1:14). Like the plants, animals were separated into kinds and species (1:21, 24). Everything was different from everything else outside of its kind.

Even within each species there were differences. No two zebras would have had their stripes in exactly the same places nor two leopards with identical spots. One rose would be at least slightly different from another. Then, of course, there was the issue of male and female.

But here comes a separation within a togetherness. When God made woman, he didn’t make her out of the dust of ground as he had the male of the species. “So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man” —Genesis 2:21, 22.

Right from the beginning separation was planted. Nothing remains the same, nothing is stagnant, entirely repetitive. Still, the man recognized that though separation, difference, change was a part of the creative process, all things belonged together as part of the divine order, the great plan. He knew that because the woman was part of him even though she was distinct from him, they were meant to be together (2:23).

Sin would damage that, just as it would damage the relationship between God and his creation. Though man was created after God’s image, to be a part of him, though separate and distinct, God and man were meant to be together.

In the beginning everything was new, everything was a first-time experience, a brand-new discovery, a never before travelled path, an adventure into the unknown. Every sensation, every glance, every action would have prompted a, “”wow, that was cool!”

It is impossible to fully restore that sense of wonder as each change greets us this year, as each difference challenges us, as each sameness reminds us of how connected we actually are.

I am the same person I was yesterday, but today will bring across my path the need to adjust to separations, to differences, to changes. Can I greet them with wonder, with my hand tightly clasped in God’s, knowing that the separations and adjustments have essentially changed nothing; I am still his and we were meant to be together? And based on the assurance that such a union brings me, I pray that I be able to say as each new experience appears, “wow, that was cool!”

Looking down on his creation, God said that it was good, even “very good” (1:31). It wasn’t perfect. The capacity for deviation from the divine plan was there. My wonder in walking in unison with God through the changes in life will be damaged by my fears, my lack of faith, my arrogance, my disobedience. But in the end, God, the Creator and Sustainer of my life, will bring me through and together he and I will say that it was “very good.”