02-22-20

ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
February 22, 2020
Scripture: Genesis 1:12
The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.

Thought for the Day: Rabbi Bradley Artson, the Dean at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, wrote an online article entitled: The Bible is a Book of Inclusion and Love. He opens the article with these words:

The Bible starts with two profound stories: The first story we are given is of a God who cannot bear to be alone. A God who is driven by love to create a world of flowering and cascading diversity in which nothing is precisely like what came before it; in which each new creature is delightfully fresh and novel; in which God, thrilled by each new creation, says: This is good. And then God creates a creature with the capacity, also, to look at diversity, and to look at novelty, and to say: This is good! And we are told in this story that we are made in that God’s image.

Click Here For The Full Article

I’ll confess that I got rather emotional in reading those words. There is amazing beauty found in the Book of Genesis, including what I describe as the Creation Poem. But the way Bradley Artson redirected my thinking on those words was a true awakening, an awakening into joy. As I write these words, I have opened my office blinds just to look outside. The diversity of plants (and weeds) outside my window is just a hint of what is so often overlooked in life. The Poet of Genesis 1 has the reader spinning around so as to take in the rapid explosion of new beauty that is unlike the beauty of the previous verse. With every moment of dumbfounded wonderment it is as if God is saying, “But I can top that!”

Prayer: For the beauty of the earth, O Creative Spirit, my heart is full. Don’t allow me to become complacent and miss the never before seen new that is standing before me. Amen.

via WordPress https://ift.tt/2wF9nzh