And good said, "It was God!"

The past two weeks my responsibilities have extended to teaching Sunday school at our congregation with the grade-school children.  At first I was nervous to be responsible for such a task, not confident in my ability to communicate simple sentences, much less teach the Gospel.  But I have come to look forward to Sunday mornings and very much enjoy my time with the young adults.

Last week we read the creation story, and as we learned the numbers 1-7 we also learned the simple vocabulary of what was created on each day.  Regardless of how the earth was actually created, or how long it actually took, I believe God had everything to do with it.  And the incredible Hungarian accents reminded me of something else I truly believe.

Check out this super amateur video we made!

Aren’t the kids precious!!?? And they speak English quite well!  Sometimes their pronunciation of  “God” and “good” sound the same, and sometimes they forget how the “oo” sounds.

Instead of saying, “God said, ‘It was good’”.  They would sometimes say, “Good said, ‘It was God!” This mistake could not have made a greater theological point. 

The overwhelming interpretation of “God said it was good” is that God was pleased with his perfect creation.  He was so well pleased that on the seventh day he rested to enjoy in the magnificence of his creation.  But as we all know, a little later down the road a man and a woman named Adam and Eve tainted the image of “good”  Even though Adam and Eve meant no harm to God, sin entered the world and all that was good was infected with the urge to do wrong.  Though we constantly seek to do good, sinful nature seems to occur.  Lutherans especially recognize this predicament, that we are simultaneously saint and sinner.  And rather than being caught in the dilemma of being 100% sinner, we rejoice in being 100% saint through the grace of Jesus Christ.

This Romans verse takes a couple of readings to make sense of the dilemma, but it’s worth a read.

Romans 7:19-25

"I want to do what is good, but I don’t.  I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.  But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.  I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong.  I love God’s law with all my heart.  

But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind.  This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.  Oh, what a miserable person I am!  Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?  Thank God!  The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord."

All that is bad is the sin living inside of us, and all that is good is God living through us.  All that is good is God!  Thanks be to God for those Hungarian accents!

More later

-Mere