Genesis 2 is one of those books we are going to take a little time with. The first part of the chapter takes us to day 7 in the creation story. God has just spoken the world into existence. He just created it all. I love how it says “heaven and earth were finished, down to the last detail”. I don’t know about you, but I am not really a detail person. That is really saying it mildly. I hate details because I usually don’t even see them. I fly at a pretty high level a bit in the future and far too often miss the current and the nitty gritty. God was sort of working on big stuff – speaking day and night, sun and moon, earth and oceans – into existence. But He still doesn’t miss the small stuff. In fact He gets it all down to the last detail. What an amazing fact. There is not one thing on this earth God didn’t plan and create down to the very detail.
Of course on day 7 He rests. We could talk about how long it took to get to this day, and whether God was plum tuckered out by then, but c’mon on, He didn’t rest because He was tired. He rested because He wanted to enjoy the work of His hand and to set the precedent for how we too should live. God knows we need to slow down and rest and take in His beauty. We need to stop and smell the flowers. We have to get away from the rat race and relax. But the world wasn’t complete quite yet. “God formed man out of the dirt”. I have been called older than dirt, dumber than dirt, a dirt bag and a dirt boy. But God basically says I am dirt. Have you ever really stopped to consider that? He took this handful of dirt and breathed life into it. I am lucky to get a flower to grow in it, but to just breathe life into it, now that is God. “Man came alive” when God breathed. He changed his style a bit here. All the rest of creation He spoke into existence, but when man comes along, He breathed life, He “blew into his nostrils”, and life began. What an illustration of how God not only created us but is part of us. He put us here so He would be able to inhabit us with His presence. We were created for that purpose, yet so often we spend our time trying to keep Him away and out of our life. That is a miss on our part. Have you considered the fact that God created you just the way He did for a specific purpose and plan. He did! He has a plan written just for your life. He wants to do specific things in and through you. It doesn’t get any more exciting than that! We need to get on His bus and get with His program and watch Him work through us!
