And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
- Genesis 1:31a (ASV)
And yet He left not himself without witness, in that he did good and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness.
- Acts 14:17 (ASV)
Paul said that everyone can see God’s power and deity through what He has created (Romans 1:20). I believe you can also add God’s goodness to that. What are some of the practical, everyday things you see and experience that let you know that God is good?
For myself I see incredible beauty in what God has created, from the galaxies down to the sub-microscopic details. But more than that, I see that God gave us the capacity to enjoy what He has created, to get pleasure from these things.
Imagine a world in which we can see, but not in color, where we can eat, but it all tastes bland or awful, and where we can hear, but we can’t appreciate vibrations in the air as music and singing. God could have made the world that way if He wanted to. We would have to eat to survive, but we would avoid it otherwise. I’m so thankful that God made the world enjoyable. It tells me that God is a good, loving God.
Whenever I eat a cherry, I marvel as I think about how different it is from foods we make on assembly lines. There’s no comparison between our candy and God’s. A cherry looks and tastes better, and is better for you. There’s no wrapper to throw away (the skin is edible), and the throw-away part (the pit) is good to toss since it can grown into a cherry tree. A cherry is incredibly complex, and yet God makes trillions of them every year with no effort at all, along with strawberries, bananas, kiwis, etc. … yes, and even okra
.I believe that God has the wisdom and power to created the world instantly, in less than nano-second, but I think He took time to make it beautiful and enjoyable, a thing of glory, a piece of art.
And all this in a world affected by the curse. I can’t image what things were like before the fall, of what the new heavens and new earth will be like.