Creation's Prerequisite

Some days feel like Eden, thick and pulsing richly with life, dripping with dew, heady with flowers. Creation feels new on these days, and I feel like I could still walk side by side with You, experiencing what it means to be created in Your image. You even gave me my own dominion, a hierarchy of creation that mirrors Yours. My flesh bears evidence of Your Spirit. You made me a fleshly replica of what exists in the heavens, gave me rule over a hierarchy of beings existing side by side with another hierarchy, one of pure spirit, but both ruled absolutely by You.

I look like You, but I am not You. I am like You as my own reflection is like me. Image without essence, my flesh a powerless reflection of Your Spirit. All the parts are present, but they don't function independently. Even my own dominion exists only to reflect Your vast one. Did Adam and Eve, when they walked with you in Eden, recognize their resemblance to You? Is that when it all began to go wrong?

This may be why You created wisdom before anything else, the same wisdom of which fear of You is the beginning. Without fear of you, I will take my own kingship too seriously, raise myself too high. I look like You, and intellectually know that I am not You, but practically, when I survey the vast kingdom You have given me, and the strength and intellect, I forget who You are. That is when I sin.

Still, You gave me life and want me to live it and, on days like this, physical life seems a richer creation than spirit. I do not imagine that spirits smell or feel or taste. You made a day like this for tasting, but I need wisdom to put this life in its intended context. You did not make me human, the crown of creation, to deny life. The life You made in me is good; You said so. You did, however, make me to deny sin.

When I consider the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and the stars that you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands. You put everything under his feet.--Psalm 8:3-6

Does not wisdom call out? "The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began."--Proverbs 8:1,22