God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning--the sixth day.
Genesis1:31
Genesis tells the creation story twice: In chapter one it is from a cosmological perspective showing how the things that other nations worshipped like the sun, the mountains and the animals were all effortlessly brought into being by God. The account in chapter two is more intimate, giving us a bit more detail and it highlights the closeness and involvement of God in the creation of the human race.
What permeates both accounts is a sense of abundance and contentment.
- God saw all that He had made and it was _good_.
- God makes Adam from clay and lovingly breathes life into Him.
- God gives Adam a garden, a vocation and a partner.
- Adam upon seeing Eve is ecstatically content!
- They were naked but not ashamed.
This is how we were originally created, but the sense of "my-cup-runneth-over gratitude" has been replaced with a sense of "I've been done in! I'm not satisfied!"
We don't have to look far for the cause of this - it's described in Genesis 3 where Satan creates a deep sense of mistrust and discontentment in Eve and this ultimately leads to humankind's fall into sin.
Dove, the manufacturer of many skincare products, has made three hard-hitting movies* in their "Campaign for real beauty." One of them, called "Amy" is about a boy who is visiting Amy's house, calling her to come out, but she stays inside. It ends with the caption: "Amy can think of 12 things that are wrong with her appearance - he can't think of one." The other movie shows how much make up work and photo-shopping they do on a model to make a billboard advert.
We have lost the sense of contentment that we could have in our lives. God has created us well and on the whole we are discontent with ourselves because others have told us to be!
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* If you have a quick internet connection and a flash-enabled browser you can watch the movies here:
http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.co.uk
Click on the dove-film icon below the banner ad.
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
