The story of the Bible begins with God bringing life out of darkness, ordering our beautiful world and then blessing all of its creatures.
Hold on. Blessing? That's one of those funny religious words.
Yeah. Right. People say a blessing over their meal or after they sneeze.
Or just a general way to say that things are going well for me.
But in the Bible, a blessing is more specific. The first blessing in the Bible is when God creates animals. "And he blessed them saying, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the land.'" Ah, so God's blessing is about flourishing and multiplication of life.
Right. It's when God shares his life-producing ability with others. Next, God gives humans an additional blessing that sets them apart from the animals.
Not only are we one of God's creatures that can generate new life, we've also been appointed as God's representative image to rule and oversee this whole flourishing world on God's behalf.
So part of our blessing is to take care of God's blessing for all creation.
And God wants us to rule while trusting in his abundance, to eat from the tree of blessing, that is, the tree of God's own eternal life.
Now there is another tree to eat from. Yes, and it represents this decision to try and seize abundance and life on our own terms, by our own wisdom.
