Genesis 1 -2:3

It is early afternoon on a Tuesday, September 1st, to be exact. My work week begins on Tuesdays, so these mornings are always full to overflowing. I’m behind when I start, or, at least, it feels that way. I try to remember that I love my work – most of it. Even the tasks that seem to go against my nature need to be done so that the “good stuff” can actually happen, so I try to like those parts, too, rather than just grit my teeth and “go to work.” In order to do my job, my vocation, I need to come up with words, and separate out ideas from each other so that I can make decisions. I need to arrange what I’ve been given (whether it be words, or storage boxes or curriculum pieces), and I need to come up with new possibilities.
So, a few minutes ago, I picked up another of my tasks: to start reading through the bible so that I can post my engagement with the scriptures and we can all then be in conversation, or at least, in contact. I got a cup of coffee and smiled. This part doesn’t seem like work. Opening the bible seems to me like a treat, a reward, a respite from the list of things to be done. Reading is glorious, and the bible always pulls me in.
Begin with the beginning. Bereshit. Genesis. I read about God working. Each day God does a little bit more. Each day has its own task – sometimes creating order, sometimes rearranging, sometimes making up something new. As God finishes each part, God says, “Good.”
Is that because what God did, the product itself, was good? Or, is that because what God was doing, the process itself, was good?
Yes. Both, I think.
The first chapter of Genesis is here insisting that the world is good, that God is in it, creating and endorsing and loving it, loving us. Driving along Riverside Drive, that bend where the road is briefly between the river and a pond, with the sun leaving behind one last petal pink surge of light over the river on my left and with the heron keeping guard over the quiet pond on my right – in that brief glimpse -- I echo that “good” of God’s and I give thanks. Watching my daughter tilt her head just so as she considers some new possibility, I echo that “good” of God’s and I give thanks. What has been made in this universe of ours is good.
And the making is good, too. The process, the commitment, the calling of all one’s resources and being and gifts for a single purpose, the act of creating and rearranging and imagining is good. Made in the image of the Holy One, we work. This, too, is good.
So, is the seventh day. The day of ceasing or of resting (shavat or Shabbat) is part of the story, too. God pauses. God finishes. God says enough for now. On the seventh day, God doesn’t seem to do anything. God blesses this day of not doing. God simply is.
And that is everything.