The Long Journey Home: Designed for relationship
In the creation story, God establishes by nature of his creative work the uniqueness, value and purpose of all humans. Our value and purpose are rooted in the intentional design of our Creator who we are told in Genesis 2 shaped us, formed us and breathed His life into us. You and I are not random and not a mistake.
Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. -Genesis 2:7-8
The psalmist will expand on this in Psalm 139 when he writes: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
But another aspect of our humanity that is being laid out in the first two chapters of Genesis is in regard to relationship. There is first and foremost a special relationship established by the unique creation of humanity. As those created in His image, you and I are brought into a relationship different than the rest of His creation. It’s first, a relationship with God. Once we have been placed in relationship to Him, the rest of our relationships take shape. This works just like a compass which places us in relationship to magnetic north, thereby orienting us to every other location on earth.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. -Gen 2:15
More importantly than giving us a direction or job, it speaks to a special relationship between the one who has been given responsibility (man) and the one he is responsible to (the Creator). But a further relationship unfolds in the creation narrative as God expands his relationship with man through the creation of a woman.
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”- Genesis 2:18
And it is in the unfolding of these relationships that God works for His glory and our flourishing. You and I are designed and created with value and purpose. But more importantly, we were designed in relationship to God, in relationship to creation and in relationship to one another. And those relationships were created by God, established by God, given parameters and even given a place…a garden for those relationships to be cultivated, developed, grown and lived out. This is our design. Therefore, this can only be where real life is found and experienced.
(Aaron Gesch is pastor of Basin First Baptist Church.)