Missio Dei: WK2 - MON
WHAT GOODNESS LOOKED LIKE BEFORE WE BROKE IT
Genesis 1:31, 3:6-7 (NLT) “Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!... The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it... At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness.”
To understand why the mission matters, you need to hold two images at once. The first is God at the end of the sixth day, looking over everything he has made and calling it very good. The Hebrew word carries the sense of beautiful, right, exactly as it should be. The world in its original design was a place of unbroken relationship: humans with God, with each other, with the creation they were given to tend.
One day in university, my roommates decided to throw a small party, and another friend of ours who lived nearby was there when we were planning it. We were working through what we needed: food, drinks, music. He volunteered to handle the food order, said he knew a good place, took down what everyone wanted. We gave him the money. The night of the party, we waited. And waited. Someone eventually asked where he was. He shrugged off the question. That was when the penny dropped. He had been nursing a grievance about something, and he had decided, quietly and deliberately, never to place the order at all. He had taken the money and the responsibility and had simply chosen not to use either. There was no food. The party dissolved. What made it so difficult to shake was not the inconvenience but the intentionality of it: someone had taken something that was supposed to be for others and turned it into an instrument of harm.
That is the second image. It’s not a catastrophe from outside but it’s a choice from within. We see a hand extended toward a fruit, and a decision to trust their own judgment over God’s. As soon as that happened everything that was whole slowly became fractured, and the first pair hid naked and ashamed behind some leaves. The whole architecture of relationship shifted into something complicated and painful.
Both images are required for mission. The goodness of creation keeps us from abandoning the world but the reality of the fall keeps us from being naive about it. God doesn’t love a theoretical humanity, he loves this one, with its scar tissue and its grief and its persistent, irrational capacity for both cruelty and kindness.
Genesis 1:31, 3:6-7 (NLT) “Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good!... The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it... At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness.”
To understand why the mission matters, you need to hold two images at once. The first is God at the end of the sixth day, looking over everything he has made and calling it very good. The Hebrew word carries the sense of beautiful, right, exactly as it should be. The world in its original design was a place of unbroken relationship: humans with God, with each other, with the creation they were given to tend.
One day in university, my roommates decided to throw a small party, and another friend of ours who lived nearby was there when we were planning it. We were working through what we needed: food, drinks, music. He volunteered to handle the food order, said he knew a good place, took down what everyone wanted. We gave him the money. The night of the party, we waited. And waited. Someone eventually asked where he was. He shrugged off the question. That was when the penny dropped. He had been nursing a grievance about something, and he had decided, quietly and deliberately, never to place the order at all. He had taken the money and the responsibility and had simply chosen not to use either. There was no food. The party dissolved. What made it so difficult to shake was not the inconvenience but the intentionality of it: someone had taken something that was supposed to be for others and turned it into an instrument of harm.
That is the second image. It’s not a catastrophe from outside but it’s a choice from within. We see a hand extended toward a fruit, and a decision to trust their own judgment over God’s. As soon as that happened everything that was whole slowly became fractured, and the first pair hid naked and ashamed behind some leaves. The whole architecture of relationship shifted into something complicated and painful.
Both images are required for mission. The goodness of creation keeps us from abandoning the world but the reality of the fall keeps us from being naive about it. God doesn’t love a theoretical humanity, he loves this one, with its scar tissue and its grief and its persistent, irrational capacity for both cruelty and kindness.
- Where do you still see traces of God’s original goodness in the world?
- How have you personally experienced the fractures caused by sin and brokenness?
- How can holding both beauty and brokenness together deepen your compassion for others?
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