Good to be together on this Tuesday. I’m glad we can continue to explore what it means to “Begin with Basics” in the Pastor’s Workshop.
As you know our texts for this week are Genesis 1:1-3 (we expanded just a bit from yesterday) and Isaiah 43:1,18-21. Our focus is on Creation and creating.
On Tuesday we examine our texts more closely. We look for a logic that links the ideas and images we noted yesterday. Is there a theme that runs through both of these Scriptures? Does that same “thread” run through our lives?
Genesis 1 begins in a “time and space before time and space”. The phrase used by the Biblical writer is Tohu va-Vohu (formless, void). I love Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase in “The Message”. The universe was a “soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness.” It was out of this nothingness God created … something, everything! “Let there be …” were the words of the Lord.
Isaiah 43 begins with a similar thought. There was a time before the “people of God” were the “people of God”. There was a time before Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There was a time before God said, “You shall be my people and I shall be Your God”. Then God proclaimed the covenant and brought into existence a people. God created them and formed them. In this text God is reminding them of their beginning. And in their remembrance bringing them a word of hope. Their Creator is continuing to create. In their time of exile In Babylon, God will make a “way in the wilderness”.
The background for both Scriptures is chaos and crisis. In Genesis it is Tohu va-Vohu. In Isaiah it is Exile. And in both circumstances, God creates. God creates in love. God creates something, everything good. God creates a people to live in covenant with Him and with one another.
God’s “creating” is the theme for both Scriptures. It is also the thread that runs through our lives. The God who created in the Beginning, who created In the Exile, continues to create today. We ask the question, as people who are creations of God, created in God’s image, what does it mean to possess and exercise that same capacity for creating in the midst of God’s continuing act of creation? The challenge is, “How can we cooperate with that continuing work of God?” How do we participate in God’s emerging Good? As a people of God, created in the image of God, called into covenant by the love of Christ, how can we “get creative”?
I look forward to how our message will explore ways we can ask and answer that question creatively. Engaging in life creatively, in ways we cooperate with God’s emerging Kingdom, is an exciting blessing.
In that gift of grace, I’ll let you get to work. I invite you to consider, “how can I get creative with my creating Lord of love today?”
Prayer: Gracious God, thank You for the blessing of this day. Thank you for Your creating love which has been from the Beginning. Thank you for how Your creating love brings good into being. Thank you for how I can participate in that blessing as I live this day in Your love. In that gift of Your grace, guide me by Your Spirit that I might “get creative with You today”. In the name of the One through whom all things came into being, even Jesus Christ our Lord.