It is in the second chapter that we get more details on exactly what happened in regards to the creation of man and woman. We get specifics in the story line.
So, we're brought into the whole of creation and we're the only ones given a task to accomplish. The birds were never sat down (at least it's not recorded) and told what to do. The shrubs didn't get a growth plan and goals and objectives. But man was endowed with a task. God created us in His image, and that included accomplishing something beyond 'surviving'.
So what's our job??
The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
Our job is to take care of the creation. All of the creation, and encouraging the creation to meet its potential by caring for it.
We're also the only part of creation that received an explict rule. (seemingly arbitrary (specifics about its reason to come, I'm sure))
you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die
Honestly, why the rule? Why even put us near the tree if we can't eat it? .... a question for all time... I mean I know the theological responses, but deep in my heart I can still ask "Why?"
Anyways, I kept coming back to verse 6:
but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground
Just thinking in line with my whole "perceive the stream" topic...it's just like God to keep reminding me that I'm on track. The stream came up whether man was there or not. God's will was accomplished, with or without our help and yet He still decided to create these finicky, problematic, troublesome creatures...and still called them GOOD.
In my own ministry, it's a reminder that God doesn't necessarily need me to get His will accomplished, but He's chosen me to be a part of it. It also forces me to recognize that God's been at work in the various situations around me LOOOOONG before I ever showed up, and well after I move on.
God is the stream, not me.
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