Archives: Genesis 1:1-2:4

Loving Kids Creates Loving Kids

“Out of the mouths of infants and children your majesty is praised above the heavens,” or so our Psalm for today says.

Sometimes that seems very true, especially when your five-year-old asks an endearingly insightful question about God.

Sometimes that seems less true, such as when the kids are having a screaming fight in the back seat of the car or a meltdown in the grocery aisle.

There’s less majesty in that moment and more a feeling of, “Having kids–whose idea was this?”

Do you think God ever asks the same question about us?

Creating humanity—having kids—whose idea was this?

It’s certainly possible.

God knows we’ve caused God enough heartache over the years that God could hardly be blamed for rethinking the decision to become a parent.

But what we observe from our scriptures today is that God wants for us what we want for our own children: a safe, happy, nurturing environment for us to grow up in and reach our full potential.

Today we have the story of creation in Genesis, and we observe the dedicated care and attention God puts into creating the world in which we will live.

Bear in mind that this is the Almighty God, who presumably could snap God’s fingers and poof! There are galaxies within galaxies.

But no—God takes time.

God takes six whole days, and of course we understand now that those six days were also millennia of stars and planets cooling and single celled organisms developing into more complex organisms, the long walk toward life of which we are the ultimate beneficiaries.

God does not rush the home that God is creating for us.

What else do we want for our own children as we create their environment? Continue reading

God’s Losing Bet

God is a reckless romantic, driven by love to the point of poor decision-making.

That is what is revealed to us by the actions of the Trinity in creation, which we read today.

Far from a dry and repetitive etiology, the first two chapters of Genesis are a shockingly intimate portrait of the inner nature of God.

Through this outpouring of creativity, in the midst of this transcendently powerful generation of new life, we see the most hidden and intimate desire of God—to share God’s love through every atom of creation.

Creation is the work of the Word in the largest sense, the trees and the sky and the waters and us all spoken into existence on the breath of the Spirit from the mouth of God, for which Jesus will live and die and live again.

The nature of Trinity Sunday encourages us to think and talk about big, beautiful theological concepts, ideas that are too large for our minds but somehow fill our hearts with energy and light.

We are invited to dwell in the mystery of God, marveling at how God reveals Godself to us and longing for the day when we leave this earthly life and finish looking through a glass darkly, finally seeing God face to face.

But what does it all mean practically?

How can the theological doctrines of our faith, the ideas about God that are a hard-won mix of gut-level instinct about God and carefully worked-out intellectual exploration of God, help us to live better and deeper Christian lives? Continue reading