Season of Advent

In this passage from Genesis, God establishes a covenant with Noah for all of Creation: a promise not to destroy what God has made. Why would God want to destroy all that was proclaimed good in the beginning?! But it would be overly naïve to deny the reality of sin and evil: the enemy of good, of God. So, made in God's image, we are good, and all of creation is good, but we are affected by evil just as Noah's neighbors, the Israelites who followed Moses out of the desert, and the Jews and Gentiles of first century Palestine were. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

 

God's answer to the problem of sin is not to destroy what was tainted, but to defeat the taint, the evil. God sent Emmanuel, God with us, and entered Creation. God became part of Creation in Jesus (not outside as Creator) to make a new covenant with all who believe, in order to defeat evil.

 

This God is intimately invested and involved with Creation: a loving, merciful, and devoted Creator, who does not stop at, "Well, I tried - I give up," but follows through, accompanies us through the ups and downs of human life, through the joy and suffering, all the way to the cross, because God loves us so much!

 

As difficult as life can be here, the endless traffic and crush of tourists, the smoke from burning dumpsters or tires, refugee camps, checkpoints, and military occupation, God sees good. This means that we too can see good if we look for it. There are extremists in both camps, Israeli and Palestinian, who talk about pushing the other into the sea; no one here deserves exile or annihilation, because we are all a part of God's creation and God has deemed creation good. And even though the tension grates on your soul, and you feel compelled to pick a side and consider the other the enemy, our part in God's mission of reconciliation is to recognize the good created in each person and to love the image of God present there. For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, and Jesus commands us to love one another as he first loves us.

 

 

-Abby