There’s an interesting phrase in the second verse of Genesis “ תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ” meaning unordered and uninhabited. We often interpret this as “the nothingness,” but the truth is God has just created the heavens and the earth in verse 1, so there is something. It’s just currently empty and with no structure.
I often imagine a great artist standing before his blank canvas. A blank canvas is exciting because it can be anything the artist chooses to paint. In other words, there before the artist is the potential to create something that is only limited by his imagination.
In the story of Genesis, God is standing before His great canvas. He begins to create and what a wonderful creation it turns out to be. God on several occasions calls His creation “good.” And on a very special occasion, after creating man, God claims that it is “very good.” Preceding that verse, God states His desire to create man in His Own Image. To God, this is “very good” but to us, it seems somewhat peculiar. What does this mean to us? What are we supposed to do with that information?
At the very least, it tells me that, in some ways, we are similar to God Himself. What a glorious gift! God then proceeds to invite Adam into a harmonious symbiotic relationship by asking Adam to name the animals. With this responsibility, Adam has now become a part of creating! Interesting!
It seems to me that one of the greatest gifts of this life is that we have the ability to create. Obviously not on the scale of the All-Powerful Mighty God, but most assuredly on a smaller scale in our daily lives. Remember, we are not nothing! If anything, we are a “very good” creation. Our every day is a blank canvas. As human beings we certainly take what is nothing and turn it into what is. We have the ability to put letters together and turn sentences in paragraphs and chapters into books and communicate with each other. We have the responsibility to create and make society better by constraining evil, greed and malevolence that besets each of us. We have the responsibility to plunge ourselves into the unknown and face the potential that God has placed before us. Each day, we have the choice to make the world better by moving it away from hell and toward heaven in a manageable capacity. That’s a great life goal. Life is hard and tough, and we are all looking for something meaningful, something that gets us out of bed, something that we can fight for! Against hell and FOR heaven, and that IS something worth fighting for.
It's not difficult to see how bad the world is, but the real adventure is how we respond to that. Our lives are a blank canvas filled with potential and numerous possibilities, and we get to paint on them!!!! I’ll say that again because it is mind-blowingly important:
WE GET TO PAINT OUR LIVES!
Which begs the questions, “What does your canvas look like right now?” and, “What do you plan on painting?”
