2nd Direction Point: Meditate

I remember a day once long ago when I was a younger man, about twenty years old.  It was in my “pre-Christian” time of life.  I had a job at a retail store in a large, enclosed shopping mall.  In the middle of the mall was a huge courtyard with a large fountain underneath a massive skylight that gave view to a significant portion of the sky.  Surrounding the fountain on four sides were tiered carpeted steps—bleachers, really—on which shoppers and lovers and workers relaxed while children played around on the steps, their loud and raucous yells of joy muted by the soft roar of the fountain itself.  Once while taking a work-break in the courtyard, it struck me how idyllic, even Edenic, the place was.  As far as I could tell, no one had a care in the world or, if they did, this was a place where they could find a “seventh day rest” from them.

While taking my break there in the early afternoon, I gazed placidly up through the skylight at the incredible cloud structures that were passing by before my eyes.  The robin’s egg blue of the sky with immense tufts of cotton drifting by, each of them a unique shape caught temporarily in time.  I was struck by the sheer wonder, beauty, and simplicity of everyday creation.  As my mind took this in, I began to wonder about us humans: how were we intrinsically different from, say, horses?  Despite the natural power I was witnessing, it occurred to me that humans had affected the weather patterns behind those clouds, had planted flags on the moon, had taken raw elements of nature and turned them into the steel, glass, artificial lighting, and gas-heated space in which I was now sitting.   I was struck by the human power and ability to not only change the natural environment but our ability to create artificial environments.  In short, I was swept up in the realization that, out of all forms of life hitherto formed, we alone had this power of recreation or the manipulation of the creation.  The major dinosaurs had ruled the earth for millions of years but had not done what we were able to do.  Why?  What is it about us humans that makes us so uniquely different?

Journaling questions –

1.  God imbues the creation with the ability to self-recreate.  How do you recreate God’s “and it was good” creation in your own life?

2.  What is meant by “God’s image and likeness?”  Does your life reflect this?

3.  If you were in charge of the Garden of Eden, what rules or parameters would you establish governing what goes on there?  How are you recreating the Garden in your life and others’ lives today?