Jacob / Israel

Pharoah’s Daughter

El Roi: Hagar & the God Who Sees

Two Suitors

It Was {Very} Good

My reading nook/loft. I won the beautiful  "Abide in Me"
banner at a recent women's retreat, it was created by
@mossandmudpies. God was preparing me for this day!

God...saw that it was good.

God saw that it was good.

God saw that it was good.

God saw that it was good.

God saw that it was good.

God saw that it was good.

God saw that...it was very good.

I began 2020 in my pjs, curled up in a chair that I've always intended to use as my quiet place but never have. 

I opened my new one-year chronological bible (thanks, bro- & sis-in-law!) and started the new year determined to regain an intimacy with God that, I confess, suffered this past year.  I did a lot of doing for Him, and teaching about Him, but not spending time with Him.

(I also did my share of grumbling as I struggled to recover from foot surgery, and parent teenagers, and juggle jobs...  And, just an FYI, I discovered that grumbling tends to keep you from genuine, surrendered intimacy with God.  Ouch.)

I know I'm not alone, because people have told me so.  A lot of us are in a rut.  Ruts of busyness.  Ruts of worry.  Ruts of expectations.  Ruts of religious habit.  After decades of faith, sometimes we rest on our laurels.  We recall with joy all that God has done for us, or that we've done for Him, or we become content with "our way" of serving or worshipping, and we stay there.  Blissfully stagnant.  Loving Him in the familiar fishing hole, when the great wide ocean is calling.

And so yesterday, as I sat in that sun-faded-but-not-worn chair, under a beautiful new banner created by a beautiful friend that says "Abide in Me," I read the oh-so-familiar creation account in Genesis.

But (as is His way) God made that oh-so-familiar passage strike me with new insight, targeted exactly for my current yearning to launch out of my deep rut.

You might think it's simple and not worth the wind-up of this blog thus far, but it was an incredibly impactful way for me to begin the first day of this new year.  So here it is...

After each stage of creation, God stepped back and assessed, declaring that what He'd made was good.  As if there were any doubt...?  Even the perfect Creator modeled that it's good to reflect on what we've done.  For us to take time to assess, to affirm, to celebrate what He's done in and through us. 

And then He modeled something else.  {Cue the rut-exiting exhortation!}  After God assessed that something was good, He moved on to the next work.  Always building on the previous work.  Never stopping until the work was absolutely complete.  Only then was it very good.

Imagine if He'd stopped after separating light and darkness? There would be light to see, but nothing to actually gaze upon.  Or if He'd separated the land from the water, but didn't fill it with flowers and trees?  Or if He'd created land and sea but no creatures to fill them?  Or no us?

God impressed on me the importance of both celebrating and then moving forward.  That I am not finished and should never be satisfied simply affirming past endeavors.  That I don't want to miss out on amazing things that He has in store if I will step into them.  That I should continue to build on what He has done in me and through me until it is absolutely finished.  Until I am finished.  In His Presence.  

That will be very good, indeed.