Hey everyone,
Last Wednesday we began journeying together through A World Unbroken. For seven weeks, we are taking a closer look at each episode of God’s Story, from creation to restoration.
Each week, we will write up a short summary of the the week’s focus. This might help you if you aren’t able to be at youth group for a week, and it might help parents know and understand what we’re talking about and provide a chance for you to continue the conversation at home. So, here’s the first week’s write-up.
“In the beginning…” The first part of God’s Story is one that those of us raised in the church have learned since we first started Sunday School: Create. This first: God created. And it was a glorious, beautiful creation. Here’s some highlights of our time together last Wednesday.
We talked as a group about the amazing dream that God had in creating the world. A line from the video we watched was, “His dream was as big as roaring waters. His dream was like the ocean. His dream was vast like mountain ranges and teeming life in motion.” God creating the world was a divine dream and divine act of love - it’s amazing! And as Genesis 1 says over and over again, God saw God’s creation and saw that it was good. Even though we have all messed things up, as we will explore this week in the Broken episode, there is a goodness and beauty to God’s creation.
Another line that caught the attention of the youth was one that highlights the significance of humans being created in the image of God and our responsibility in the world that God has created: “That they might learn to dream as he and love as he had shown. And care for things as noble stewards, instead of ones who own.” We have been entrusted by God with representing God in the world. We have been filled with love so that we may love God, others, and the world. And we have been given responsibility to care for the world as stewards of God’s creation - Adam and Even were the first to be “green”, before it was just a fad…
As we read through Genesis 1 together, telling the story of God creating the world, it was tempting at times for some to get pulled into asking the question How did God create the world? It isn’t that this is a bad question to ask, but we talked at youth group that the point of the creation narrative is not to tell how God created the world but why God created the world: because of God’s unending love. It’s really easy to get into debates about how God created, but that’s not the point of the story. When we focus on the point, we may get a glimpse of this amazing act of love of God in creating the world. And besides, that’s a much more compelling story to enter into than a debate about how the world was made!
If we were to offer two specific summary points of the Create episode, it would be these:
- God created! God created everything, and everything was good, whole, and as it should be. There was shalom (wholeness, peace) throughout the world.
- God gave humans responsibility as stewards to take care of the earth and everything in it. This is a responsibility that continues for us today.
We left Wednesday night with a sense of the dream and love that God had in creating the world. It’s an amazing, glorious thing. This song captures the beauty of moving from darkness to beautiful creation (at least in our opinion).
So… what can you (we) do in response to all of this? What are some actions and practices we can do to stand in awe of God’s creation? What are some things we can do to act as noble stewards instead of ones who own?
Our prayer: God, may we live in the beauty of your creation as we love and care for all you have made, living in harmony and love with all.
We continue the story this Wednesday with the next part of God’s Story: Broken. We hope you all can make it!
