It Is Good

I don't know how many times I have read the creation account of Genesis chapter 1 in my life time- but it is a lot.  I realized recently though, that up until this point, I have been missing something.  Something profound! Something pivotal to my life as a woman, as a wife, mother, homemaker, teacher, gardener, and list maker.

It goes something like this~

Day 1: God creates light and separates it from darkness.  He saw that it was good.
Day 2: God separates the waters from the firmament (heaven).
Day 3: God separated the dry ground from the waters and called them Earth and Seas.  He saw that it was good. He brought forth grass, herbs and fruit trees and saw that it was good.
Day 4: He made the lights in the heavens~ the sun, the moon, the stars and set them in the firmament and saw that it was good.
Day 5: God filled the seas with all manner of living things and He created all manner of flying creatures and God saw that it was good.
Day 6: God brought forth living creatures and beasts of the Earth.  He saw that it was good.  He created man and woman in His likeness and blessed them and He saw it was very good.
Day 7: He rested.

Do you see that?

God, who could knit bones together with breathe and form whales to frolick in waves with mere words, might have easily spoken a word and everything, from sea mist to tyrannosaurus, dust to people, galaxies to glaciers would have been formed.  In a single word.  Why didn't He?

For the same reason that He rested on the Sabbath.  God who can breathe life in one utterance- who does not sleep and does not abandon and does not cease and is always present and all knowing and all powerful- does not need rest.  He did so, I believe, to show us how to live.

He, who could have been finished with the creation of this world and of very life with a single breath, chose instead to work in increments for us, knowing that we must work little by little. He chose to rest on the Sabbath, knowing that we would need rest.

And this is the part that I have always missed...

God knew that Day 1 wasn't how He wanted His completed creation.  He knew there would be changes to make tomorrow.  But He declared "It is good."

He was satisfied!  Even though things were left undone, even though things were not 'just so' or perfectly finished...He was content with the day and it was GOOD.

This is a lesson I needed to hear and a lesson I need to imbibe.

I begin each day with a mental (and often, paper) list of things that should be/must be done and I begin in earnest almost immediately.  After a day of doing, when I finally lay my weary bones in bed, I begin to think of all that was left undone and all that will be required the next day and the list is just as long, if not longer, than when I first began.

 In those late evenings laying in bed with a mind full of tomorrow's to-do's, I often dream of a day where I could do nothing at all... a day like that lives with the brownies and fairies in the forest- things you enjoy thinking about but realize don't actually happen.

It can be extremely frustrating for me that I never seem to get ahead though I work so hard at trying!  That I seem to always be struggling just to keep up- with homeschooling, with the gardening, with the house, with life. That I have to fight to stay one step behind instead of ten steps behind.

But perhaps there is good in that.  Perhaps there can still be PEACE in that.

If God was content on Day 3 without any zebras or flamingos or pineapples or the sun, then I ought to be content with the work I have been able to accomplish...whether or not it is perfect or even completed. And I can look forward to a new dawn to begin again, knowing that each day I have been given will be filled with new and exciting ways to bring glory to God.

God doesn't expect us to finish.  He expects us to be content in the working.

At the end of the day, when I see a long list of things to do tomorrow~ I am going to try very hard from now on to look at what I accomplished in the day, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant or how incomplete, and be able to declare with a triumpant voice that it was good.