UGLY PEOPLE

⁵ Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. ⁶ And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. ⁷ So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” ⁸ But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:5-8)

We don’t exist just to exist.

God created humanity with and for a purpose.  He made us  

1) to reflect the image of God (imago dei)

2) to be productive (fruitfulness) consistent with the Divine nature, and

3) to express both the Image and productivity through community.

In Genesis 6, with probably only a few thousand homo sapiens on the entire planet, all clustered together somewhere on the continental plates of Africa and the Middle East, the human species moved exactly away from our purpose.

They turned against the imago dei.  The people in Noah's time tried to alter their physical image by marrying and mating with “the sons of God”  (Genesis 6:4). 

They pursued fruit-less activities. Our ancient ancestors used their magnificent brains to think up knew and exponentially worse ways to disobey their Creator.

They corrupted community.  Few though they were, they hurt each other.  Noah's world was filled with murder and violence.  Nobody was his brother’s keeper. Every human being in the Pre-Flood era was a danger to himself and to others. 

Humanity had become so exactly the opposite of what God created them to be that letting them fill the planet would have been completely counter-productive.

So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, . . . for I am sorry that I have made them.”

God said, “I’m sorry I even made you.”

Dang!  That’s harsh. But it was totally justified.

The amazing thing isn’t that God decided to literally wash the Earth clean of human influence, but that He decided not to wash the Earth completely clean of human influence.

God preserved the human species by saving Noah and his immediate family.

Noah was “perfect in his generations” (Genesis 6:9).  That doesn’t mean that he was absolutely perfect.  Later on the dude gets sloppy, naked drunk. (Genesis 9:21 ).  “Perfect [sic] in his generation” means that Noah was the best his culture could produce.

(By the way, the next time you turn up your nose at someone else’s dysfunctional family, remember that we’re ALL descended from a guy who got sloppy, naked, passing-out drunk and then cursed out his grandson because the child’s dad laughed about it. That’s Genesis 9:20-24.)

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

This Noah dude was the best pre-Flood humanity had to offer, but this is what GRACE does.  Grace is God working with the best we have when even our best is pretty terrible.

Anybody with an active newsfeed can see how generally ugly and imaginatively cruel we modern, advanced humans are.  Every cultural and political demographic accuses the others of being worse, but all of us are pretty frickin’ terrible.  I mean, do you re-read the stuff you post about THEM?

We prefer lies tailored to our digital profiles to the truth.  (Matthew 24:11-11)

We complain about injustice, and we applaud injustice when it works to our advantage.  (Matthew 24:12a)

 

Christians who preach about love spew liberal and conservative hatred. (Matthew 24:12b)

We exploit each other and feel entitled to do so.

We dismantle and desecrate every kind of human community.  

We are moving exponentially faster and farther away from our purpose.

The Great Flood of Genesis 6 was the result of God being just dog tired of people being ugly to one another.  Look how ugly we've become.

Oh, yes. God is full of grace.  He always has been.  He was in Noah's day, too.

But even God gets tired of ugly.

 ---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

THE WEEKEND: (Blogging through Genesis)

¹ Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. ² And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.

³ Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.  (Genesis 2: 1-3)

Friday, at 5 P.M., I posted a grant application, acknowledged a confirmation text, and closed my laptop.  The rest of my weekend was dedicated to moving my daughter into her dorm room to begin her first year as a college student. You could say that “I ended the work which I had done, and rested from my work which I had done.”

As I write this post it’s Sunday evening and my daughter’s all moved in.  Monday, bright and early, I’ll be back in the office doing the same work which I’d ceased from doing for the weekend.  I mean, just because I stopped working for the weekend doesn’t mean I quit my job.

In the 6 days of Genesis chapter 1, God showed Moses how He had created the heavens, the earth, and the earliest forms of terrestrial life. Then for a single one-day weekend God rested.  No new building projects for 24 hours.   But, God taking a weekend off doesn’t mean He quit creating.

Since that first weekend, God has made the trees at  the edge of my yard, the clouds in the sky today, the earthworms burrowing under the foundation of wherever your wifi hotspot is connected,  you, me, and all the species of plant, animal, and microbe that did not exist when the first human beings walked around naked, munching on nuts, and berries, and “every green herb for food” (Genesis 1:30).   Bright and early everyday God is busy in the Creating business.

With so much work yet to do, why did God take a day off?  Same reason the owner or CEO at our jobs takes a day off:  He wanted to.

God wasn’t physically exhausted.

“ Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  The everlasting God, the Lord,the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary.” (Isaiah 40:28a)

He wasn’t out of ideas.

 “His understanding is unsearchable.”

And, God didn’t rest on the 7^th day because day #7 was holy.  He set apart the 7^th day because that happened to be the day He’d rested.  Wine and bread aren’t objectively holier than any other drink-carbohydrate combination.  When wine and bread are consecrated, they become holy communion.  When the end of the week was sanctified, it became the Sabbath. The Sabbath is holy, but the number 7 isn’t special. 

No. No, it isn’t. 

God simply chose to spend a day experiencing and enjoying His creative work cause He felt like it, and it’s O.K., for God to rejoice and enjoy Himself, too.  (Zephaniah 3:17)

And, though He didn’t say so, God clearly thought the way He spent the day was good because “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.” 

The benefits of a weekly day of rest are so good, so very good for us that the Lord made it mandatory.  As Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). 

So, the day after God invented humanity, God invented the Sabbath for the benefit of humanity. 

Even on His day off, God was taking care of us.

Take a day this week, and every week to think about that. 

Do what God did.  Take a break from pursuing wealth, influence, attention, or whatever it is we spend the rest of the week doing to rest and reflect on how good, how very good God is.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

BETTER WITH TIME?

From our seat in the modern world, we look back at the past and think about those poor people who weren't as "advanced" as we are. 

But, who’s really smarter:

The guy in the SUV using GPS to find a McDonald’s, or the scientist in the 60’s who put men on the moon twice using a computer that was the size of a room but slower than a kid’s Iphone, or the Vikings who without maps or a written language managed to row across the Atlantic ocean and back.

The homeowner who running into Lowe’s for a paint color that’ll last a year longer than the last one or the cave man who’s handprint made in a mixture of berry juices is still there after tens of thousands of years.

The armies of designers and contractors who spend billions of dollars constructing skyscrapers with steel and concrete or the ancient Egyptians who without bulldozers, welding torches, or mortar to hold the blocks together built pyramids that are still standing today in one of the harshest climates on earth.

Who’s really more clever, the modern chef who comes up with a new chocolate sauce for his duck confit or the prehistoric man walking through a field who looks at the seeds on top of a stand of weeds and says, “Ugg!  Me think that if me pick these, grind them under stone, add liquid, and apply heat evenly around mixture, then me make new food.  Me call it 'bread.' ”

Who’s really more “advanced,” our contemporary philosophers and pundits who with all their theories of evolution and alien intervention can’t accurately predict next year’s interest rates or this afternoon’s weather, or the ancient Mayans who’ve got them freaking out cause one of them ran out of space while writing on a rock.

We come to a place in which we have animals (pets) that die if they eat regular food that isn’t processed and people that die from eating food processed especially for human consumption.

Evolution maintains that human beings are getting better and smarter.

Ya’ sure about that?

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a pastor, writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Call me at 334-288-0577
Email me at atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme@blogspotcom.