Assigned Reading: Genesis 4-7
I've been having trouble with my computer today...trouble connecting, staying connected and system failures with crashing. My computer issues parallel the scriptural issues, and my spiritual ones.
In the midst of all the frustration of trying to make the computer cooperate, I received messages like "unable to connect" and "attempts failed." What a mess! At one point I just said, "Just forget it! I'm not messing with this anymore."
When God set everything up, it was all "good." God was creating, blessing and naming all over the place (5:2) But something happened. A liar came into the picture and eyes began looking at something forbidden and passions longed for more than what had already been generously given.
Result? A big mess.
According to chapter 3:
1. Hiding oneself from the very ones you love
2. Being afraid of truthfulness with God
3. Learning the blame game
4. Receiving a spam load of curses
5. Enmity between the sexes
6. Inequality
7. Laboring against odds and decreased fruitfulness
8. A body submitted to pain and decay
Now if that isn't enough to set one into a frustrated depression, check out what I think is the saddest verse in the Bible, at least so far...6:6 "The LORD was sorry that He created humanity on the earth and He was grieved in His heart."
God looked at us and what did God see? Wickedness and evil hearts (6:5) and corruption and violence (6:11). What a mess!
God looked at creation and in frustration said, "Just forget it!" I don't want to deal or mess with this anymore.
I think the worst thing anyone could ever say to another person would be, I wish you were never born. You aren't worth my time or energy. I am disconnecting from you and you will never be able to reconnect with me, NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY. I writing you off. Just forget it!
Now, some optimists would say, "Wait, don't forget Noah and the big ark!
Yes, there is Noah, wife, 3 named sons, 3 unnamed wives, and lots of crawling, creeping, bellowing, chirping creatures that are not forgotten. But, lest we forget, there were millions of creatures destroyed.
We try to forget it. We try to forget the sorrow of God, the grief of God's heart and the extent of the destruction of the flood. We turn this tragic story of violence into a cute children's story about fluffy animals, a ride in a big boat and smiling suns peaking through colorful rainbows. We just forget the horror, the death and the stench of decaying, bloated flesh wiped out by God's regrets.
And we just forget that despite our best attempts, we will never reconnect with God. A virus has invaded our system and the intimacy originally planned is blocked.
Day 2's reading is a horrible, frustrating tragedy. To realize how we grieve our Creator is so sorrowful, we should have our own flood...a flood of tears.
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...and we continue to grieve Him.
ReplyDeleteAny insights on "nephilites"?
Nephilites has been translated "giants" by most Biblical scholars. The term comes from a Hebrew word "naphal" which denotes "to fall," "to be inferior," "to prostrate before." Some have theorized that this is a place where "evolution" and "creation" meet. The whole issue of the "sons of God" are theorized as the descendants of the "created" humanity, and the "sons/daughters of man" were the evolved "humanity." All of this is pure conjecture as we do not have any true explanation of any of this from scripture.
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