Now that the students have gone home for the summer and all the many tasks that I do doing the school year have for the most part come to completion, I have more time once again. I have a multitude of things I need to do this summer, but my primary task is to make significant progress in my writing once again. Actually, the most important task for me is to live out what I am saying, to put it into practice. That means I must pray and be very committed to my prayer life. That means that I must take my personal relationship with Jesus very seriously, as the most important relationship in my life. I must take a good chunk of time for prayer each day, and I must make all I do a prayer. God made me with enormous and seemingly insatiable desires; those desires are the consequence of making me to be a home, temple and spouse of Himself. I am made for God; I desire to be perfectly known and loved; I desire to be completely happy forever, and all this makes the joys of this world to be of little consequence. The joys of this world can't begin to fulfill me--they are too little. Only God can and does give me the life and joy that, in my deepest self, I desire. The Good News is that my enormous desires are made to be fulfilled and that there is hope. That hope and fulfillment is a person: Jesus Christ.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
Showing posts with label God's home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label God's home. Show all posts
12.24.2007
Merry Christmas
As the last hour of Christmas Eve passes away, I wish everyone a blessed and joyous Christmas. In certain respects, this is the most important event in human history; in other respects, Jesus' passion, death and resurrection are much more important. These two events open the doors for our salvation if only we accept the graces offered by God and respond with the obedience of faith. Let's open wide our hearts today and make it an inviting home for our most-humble and little God, the All-Powerful Creator of all things.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
11.11.2007
Image and Likeness
Each According to its Kind
The main focal point in chapter one is the dry land together with what lives on it, and it is the reason that everything else has been created and put in its proper position in relation to the land. The plants and fruit trees were created on the third day to be food for man, and now on the sixth day the inhabitants of the land are put into place. First God creates all the living creatures, the cattle, the beasts, and all that creeps on the ground. Each of these is created according to its kind; here the word is used five times. It was used five times when talking about the plants, trees, fish and birds, and now it is used five more times for the creatures of the land. It is used ten times altogether. There are many patterns and repetitions in this section of Genesis 1-2:3; the only other phrase repeated ten times is “And God said.” “Each according to its kind” is a significant phrase, and its real meaning becomes clear in a verse or two when we expect it and it is not there. “According to its kind” is replaced with “image and likeness.”
A Personal Matter: the Creation of Man
We have come to the final work done on the second half of the last day of the work God did when He created. The second half of the very important day six says: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….” First of all, up until now, every time that it stated, “And God said,” God said for this to be or that to happen; He speaks using the third person in His acting. Here, however, God uses the first person, “Let us make.” Everything else that has been created up until now was made because God said it should happen, and it was. With man, we are led to expect the same wording of how everything else was made, but we are pleasantly slapped awake with a different way of God working. The wording, “let us make,” makes the creation of man something special to God; the creation of man is a personal matter for God.
Man Created to be Bride of God
The other much harder and more fruitful slap across the face is that with man there is no more mention of being made “each according to its kind.” We expect it, but it is not there because man is being created on a completely different sphere and for a completely different purpose. All the living beings created before man where created according to their own likeness and kind for the purpose of reproduction. So here, man is not made according to his own kind; how, then, is he to bear fruit and multiply and fulfill the blessing? Man is to be fruitful, but we were not made to be fruitful just according to our own kind since we were created in the image of God. We are made according to the kind of God, and united to Him we bear good fruit (see John 15).
Since man is made in the image of God, as He said: according to “our image and after our likeness,” He is made according to God’s kind. Putting two and two together, God created man as the highpoint of His creation and a home for Himself. He Himself will be the source of man’s fruitfulness; God will make man fruitful because God made man to be His spouse. Our husband is God so from Him will come our fruit (see Hosea 14:8: "I am like an evergreen cypress, from me comes your fruit").
Image and likeness means a similitude to God, but it means so much more. It means that, from the beginning, God made us to be His. He made us to be so closely united to Him, that we are married to Him. Saint Paul talks of marriage as the great mystery related to Christ (the bridegroom) and His Church (the bride) (see Ephesians 5:32: "This [marriage] is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church"). We are God's home, His temple, His bride. United to Him, we bear fruit every month.
This has set the stage for Genesis two. Simply put, Genesis two zeros in on how man is a home for God. Chapter one was how earth was made for man; the next chapter is how man is made for God. I will tell you soon what the tree of life is and what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is.
Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.
The main focal point in chapter one is the dry land together with what lives on it, and it is the reason that everything else has been created and put in its proper position in relation to the land. The plants and fruit trees were created on the third day to be food for man, and now on the sixth day the inhabitants of the land are put into place. First God creates all the living creatures, the cattle, the beasts, and all that creeps on the ground. Each of these is created according to its kind; here the word is used five times. It was used five times when talking about the plants, trees, fish and birds, and now it is used five more times for the creatures of the land. It is used ten times altogether. There are many patterns and repetitions in this section of Genesis 1-2:3; the only other phrase repeated ten times is “And God said.” “Each according to its kind” is a significant phrase, and its real meaning becomes clear in a verse or two when we expect it and it is not there. “According to its kind” is replaced with “image and likeness.”
A Personal Matter: the Creation of Man
We have come to the final work done on the second half of the last day of the work God did when He created. The second half of the very important day six says: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness….” First of all, up until now, every time that it stated, “And God said,” God said for this to be or that to happen; He speaks using the third person in His acting. Here, however, God uses the first person, “Let us make.” Everything else that has been created up until now was made because God said it should happen, and it was. With man, we are led to expect the same wording of how everything else was made, but we are pleasantly slapped awake with a different way of God working. The wording, “let us make,” makes the creation of man something special to God; the creation of man is a personal matter for God.
Man Created to be Bride of God
The other much harder and more fruitful slap across the face is that with man there is no more mention of being made “each according to its kind.” We expect it, but it is not there because man is being created on a completely different sphere and for a completely different purpose. All the living beings created before man where created according to their own likeness and kind for the purpose of reproduction. So here, man is not made according to his own kind; how, then, is he to bear fruit and multiply and fulfill the blessing? Man is to be fruitful, but we were not made to be fruitful just according to our own kind since we were created in the image of God. We are made according to the kind of God, and united to Him we bear good fruit (see John 15).
Since man is made in the image of God, as He said: according to “our image and after our likeness,” He is made according to God’s kind. Putting two and two together, God created man as the highpoint of His creation and a home for Himself. He Himself will be the source of man’s fruitfulness; God will make man fruitful because God made man to be His spouse. Our husband is God so from Him will come our fruit (see Hosea 14:8: "I am like an evergreen cypress, from me comes your fruit").
Image and likeness means a similitude to God, but it means so much more. It means that, from the beginning, God made us to be His. He made us to be so closely united to Him, that we are married to Him. Saint Paul talks of marriage as the great mystery related to Christ (the bridegroom) and His Church (the bride) (see Ephesians 5:32: "This [marriage] is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church"). We are God's home, His temple, His bride. United to Him, we bear fruit every month.
This has set the stage for Genesis two. Simply put, Genesis two zeros in on how man is a home for God. Chapter one was how earth was made for man; the next chapter is how man is made for God. I will tell you soon what the tree of life is and what the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is.
Thanks for reading.
Copyright 2007.
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