Every Living Thing Reflects God's Creative Love
Daily Scripture
Genesis 1:20-25
20 God said, “Let the waters swarm with living things, and let birds fly above the earth up in the dome of the sky.” 21 God created the great sea animals and all the tiny living things that swarm in the waters, each according to its kind, and all the winged birds, each according to its kind. God saw how good it was. 22 Then God blessed them: “Be fertile and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.”
23 There was evening and there was morning: the fifth day.
24 God said, “Let the earth produce every kind of living thing: livestock, crawling things, and wildlife.” And that’s what happened. 25 God made every kind of wildlife, every kind of livestock, and every kind of creature that crawls on the ground. God saw how good it was.
Daily Reflection & Prayer
The Genesis creation stories come from an ancient time and place. “The Hebrews’ need to identify animals stemmed… from a pragmatic need to answer basic questions about them: Can they be eaten? Do they pose a danger to people? Do they harm crops?…. these cultural differences produced an outlook on animals understandably quite distinct from ours.” * Genesis nevertheless did better than our culture often does in showing God as the loving creator of animals as well as humans.
- Genesis didn’t have the terms that modern biology uses to classify animals. “God divides the animal world into three categories: (1) the animals in the sea… (2) the birds in the sky, … and (3) the land animals. These are the three categories used by Israel’s priests to classify animals when they make distinctions between clean (edible) and unclean (inedible) animals in Leviticus 11:1-19.” ** How did Genesis’ care to reflect their day’s grasp of details show God’s regard for animals?
- Genesis 1:26 said God made humans “so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.” “In the context of Genesis 1, humans are… God’s representatives in creation …. ‘taking charge’ must be understood as exercising the same kind of authority God would exercise in the natural world.” *** Would God favor abusing or exploiting either humans or animals God created?
Prayer
Dear God, thank you for the gift of our abundant earth, and for entrusting it to my care. Help me be a faithful steward, always mindful of my choices and their impact on your world. Amen.
GPS Insights
Donna Karlen
Donna Karlen served in Communications at The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, creating and managing social media content, when she wrote this Insights blog post in 2016. It was originally for a sermon series about dogs, but works equally well for the current "Wild Kingdom" series.
I can’t help but smile just imagining God’s delight in creating all the beasts of the field, birds of the air and fishes of the sea.
Let’s say he created a horse or two first–beautiful animals, right? But then God thought, “Hmm–let’s put some stripes on the next one” and poof–a zebra! Or say God first made a giraffe with a regular ol’ neck and then decided to give it just a liiiittle stretch to create one of my favorite animals. And God just kept going: let’s put a pouch on a giant mouse, make a funny bird that can’t fly but swims like a fish, put some spots on a big kitty, add a beautiful tail here, a trunk there… It had to have been a really good time for God, Creator of Heaven and Earth! No wonder God rested after all that!
Of course all dog-lovers probably would agree that God may have done some of his best work when he came up with the noble dog. And even there God abundantly excelled. He didn’t just create a curly-haired poodle and stop there. He came up with the smooshed-face bulldog, a shaggy sheep dog, the hot dog-shaped dachshund, a joyful golden retriever–and my personal favorites: the endless combinations we lovingly call mutts.
Next weekend we’re having an animal blessing and you’re invited to bring your dogs, cats, hamsters, etc.–even snakes–to be prayed for (please put dogs on leashes and cats, hamsters, etc. and especially snakes in carriers–and PLEASE do not leave any pet in your car before, during or after the event!) And if you’ve ever lost a beloved pet, bring a picture or a memory and come join us.
(Click here for more information about the Pet Ministry Weekend.)
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Scripture quotations are taken from The Common English Bible ©2011. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
References
* Article “Animals” in Leland Ryken, James C. Wilhoit and Tremper Longman III, general editors, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998, p. 28.
** Theodore Hiebert, study note on Genesis 1:20-23 in The CEB Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013, p. 5 OT.
*** Theodore Hiebert, sidebar note “Dominion or Dependence?” in The CEB Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2013, p. 8 OT.
