God let us name the animals

This morning I was up early grading a students work on Genesis. So far I haven't gotten any farther than chapter two. I have been so floored by what I'm seeing in God's character through Genesis 1 and 2. The trip wire for my thinking this morning is this "God let Adam name the animals." I started thinking about that, and it began to occur to me that this one fact reveals the character of God in unimaginably awesome ways. It goes beyond this one fact though. The story continues and we see that God created this fine world, this good world, and then put mankind in the middle of it and told them to "subdue" it.

Here's whats jumping out at me today. God creates this AWESOME world, a world that he's thrilled with. A world full of all sorts of crazy plants ad animals, and then he lets man, a young man, a new man, begin assigning lasting names to them all. Here's what hes saying essentially... "heres my awesome world, now have at it, make it your own." I think this is what God means when he says, "subdue and have dominion" over the Earth.

God does not say "heres my perfect world, ITS PERFECT! so try not to wreck anything."..which is probably what I would have said. No, God knew that there would be some wreckage involved, but he still handed us the keys...and not reluctantly either! He handed us the keys to His world with joy, knowing that one day Michael Angelo would turn a cold block of marble into a masterpiece the world would marvel at forever...and the coolest thing is that God saw that coming...he saw it coming and was excited about it...and is still excited about it...the creative potential of mankind is miraculous, because it comes from a miraculous God in whos image we are made...and praise Him that he lets us learn to paint with beauty on the canvas of his wonderful creation, even when it means we're going to make a mess sometimes .