good : time

 

Notes for this coming Sunday.

Find a place where you will not be interrupted, and read Genesis 2.4-9, 15-25 and Luke 8.22-25 through, out loud, a couple of times.

Genesis 1 tells a sweeping overview of creation. Genesis 2 slows the story right down. Here, God does not simply speak things into being, but shapes them: the human, a garden, every living creature. Like a potter or a gardener. The human, too, is invited into the slow processes of getting to know, and growing to love, all things. The time it takes to participate in the goodness (a word we have already met several times in Genesis 1) of God’s creation. The invitation to love God, to love our neighbour as ourselves, to love all creation, takes as long as it takes: as The Supremes sang, ‘You can’t hurry love…’

In our verses from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus rests—he sleeps—while his disciples rush around in panic. And peace radiates from him.

Looking forward to the day ahead, does time feel like a gift or a tyrant (a task master driving us, or a prison governor constraining us)?

As we get older, our body asks us to slow down. Does this feel like an invitation, to become more fully human, or something to be resisted for as long as we are able?

‘good’ conveys: agreeable, beneficial, beautiful, best, better, bountiful, cheerful, at ease, fair, favour, fine, glad, goodly, graciously, joyful, kindly, loving, merry, pleasant, precious, prosperity, ready, sweet, wealth, welfare, well-favoured. Thinking about today, how have you known the goodness of God?

Reading the two passages again, is there a word or a sentence that stands out for you? What might God be saying to you through it?

You might like to colour-in the drawing of the human asleep, held in the hands of God.