"And on the seventh day, God rested from His labors, and hallowed the seventh day, for the hosts of the heavens and the earth were finished" Genesis 2:1-3.
Seasons Fall by M29
There's nothing like it...
After all the endeavor to get something substantial finished, it can be truly satisfying to just stand back and truly delight in the finished work, especially when it's something you know will bring pleasure and satisfaction for a very long time to come.
Some creations are far more significant. Building an environment for others, or yourself, must be an amazing achievement. I've often watched shows where this has been done and pondered just how splendid it must be, after years, even decades of planning, hard work and often downright frustration to bring such a grand design from dream to reality.
The opening chapter of Genesis describes God's majestic work of creation along similar lines.
After an initial work in which all the principal essentials are put in place, the last few days home in on furnishing our world with all of the marvels which surround us, culminating in a wondrous garden where the first Man and Woman, naked and unashamed, are placed to live amidst the excellence of a world rich and fruitful.
It truly is all a marvel, but in many respects, the most important 'work' or activity of all takes place at the end of the creation week, when God does something quite remarkable.
The heavens and the earth are finished. Humanity has been given a place to live well - there's plenty to be delighted about, but God's 'delight' is more than some distant appreciation.
God 'refreshes' Himself in His creation. He makes that final day special, because the completed work before Him truly reflects His nature and purpose - to reveal and share something of the depth and beauty of His character. God is delighted to 'inhabit' this moment, to make it truly special, and in so doing, He shows to His handiwork the true purpose of the created order - to eternally speak of His glorious nature.
Within the 'glory' of the goodness of that day, God had created a being as male and female which was to become the focus of that revelation. We had been formed to truly express His being, His likeness, to the rest of His handiwork, and our bodies are an astonishing expression of this. Made from the earth, they share a rich commonality with all natural life, but the body is also the means whereby we express the deep tones of the nature or personality given to us. It is in this totality that we should express the image of our Creator and Father in all of our life, in all that we do. Whilst sin and evil have marred this, God's inhabiting of His creation anticipates something amazing - the day, many thousands of years later described by John, when the dwelling of God is truly amongst men (Revelation 21).
It's when we apply this context or framework to our natural condition that the human form is given its true worth.
In our fallen world, this is often glimpsed in art or moments of natural beauty which can literally take our breath away in a similar manner to the natural beauty of creation itself.
The danger, so often in this context, is bad theology, which uses the reality of the fall to essentially mask this inherent goodness regarding the natural, marking the material in general as evil and ungodly, when the entire reason for creation contends fundamentally against this.
When Christianity speaks of our redemption from death to life, it is not referring to some kind of 'half-life' continuation as a 'soul' or 'spirit' in an ethereal estate 'way beyond the blue' - it's talking about a bodily existence on a physical world without pain, disease, death or suffering, forever.
The Apostle Paul speaks of how our current earthly 'tents' are but a pale reflection of the glorious 'mansions' - the new bodies - we will posses on first day when God's delight in Genesis becomes the common estate of all creation by the redemptive work of Christ.
So our attitude to the body, then, is part of something far more comprehensive.
In the light of this, do we look upon the naked form, and perhaps creation in general, as something rich and good, or do we only see the scars of a fallen world - a prison we long to escape?
There is clearly a great deal to consider here.
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