Genesis 1-3 

Who are we, where did we come from, what happened to us? These are the questions that help us shape our identity. When we fail to address these questions, we can easily get lost in our consumerism or enslaved by life’s hardships. Because of their significance, these are the very questions we find in the opening pages of the Bible. Genesis one describes us as the pinnacle of God’s creative handiwork. People are made in God’s image to live in God’s world and fulfill God’s purpose. Our significance is found in his design and desire for relationship with us. In Genesis two we learn that God knows us individually and personally. Men and women are made for community. And the intent of marriage – companionship, intimacy and children – requires the devotion of “leaving and cleaving.” Genesis three describes what happened to us. Our first parents believed a lie and resisted God’s truth. The result was shame, guilt, despair and death – for Adam and Eve and for their posterity. We continually experience the effects of this brokenness in our minds, our bodies, our relationships, our spirituality, and the environment.

As I read these chapters in Genesis today, I was reminded that I am called by God to live out his image as a steward of unique gifts and abilities. He has created me to bless others and the world around me in my decisions and behavior. Discovery, management, cultivation, creativity, learning, loving, communicating, and blessing: these are the tasks God has called me to engage in and to enjoy. Whether in my service as a pastor, my care for my neighbor, or my role as a husband, I am called to live before God in responsibility, grace, initiative and kindness. My shame, guilt, discouragement and eventual death become for me the arena for God’s grace to be at work in and through me.  Lord, help me to maximize the time and space afforded to me. I desire to glorify you in the way I conduct myself. May your word and its directives give me focus for my waking hours each day. And may I avoid the trap of consumerism and the enslavement that flows from hardships and self pity. May I give my best to leading and working with others in the life of the church. May I love my neighbor as myself. And may I hold fast to my wife, rejoicing in the tender partnership we enjoy together. It is in you, Father, I want to live and move and have my being. In the name of Christ, Amen.

Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and who meditates on his law day and night. They are like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all they do they prosper. The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Psalm 1

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature through the gospel: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. From the Book of Common Prayer