As one moves into the creative narrative of Genesis 1 and 2, it doesn’t take long to recognize the central idea of life. Life plays across the narrative like symphonic crescendo, getting louder and louder, until finally, the resounding note fades into the Sabbath of cessation. The oceans teem with life, land teems with life, and the apex of creation, mankind, gains animation as God breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. Like the rapid moving pages of sketch work, dazzling the viewer with visual animation, the cosmos takes its first harmonious breath as all the interwoven processes of life begin to ebb and flow like synchronized swimmers; it is a living world, made by a living God; subdued and dominated by a living soul.
The articulated commandments of creative impetus still ringing and vibrating throughout the ordered cosmos, were now replaced with the intimate and personal commandments of “increase, swarm, be fruitful, replenish, and multiply.” “Life,” God seemed to command, “beget life!” And so it was, within the very fabric of creation the purpose of propagation through reproduction, not replication, was instilled. The cosmos, so irreducibly complex, was an organism of systems and cycles, all of which propagated life. On a large scale, much akin to the human scale, the earth and its surrounding ecosystem modeled the multifaceted array of organic systems, pumping life and consuming and recycling decay. It beat to a steady drum marching forward with intrinsic purpose until, one day, the heart seized, the lungs choked, and the once seamless system of ordered creation gave evidence of corruption, decay, and death.
A seed had been sown. Yes, he whom the obligation of cultivation resided had cast into the rich, fertile soil of creation the seed of disobedience. His decay meant earth’s decay, for “cursed is the ground for thy sake!” Whence man would sow the seeds of life…pain and process; thorn and thistle. As for the womb, whence man would sow again the seed of life; increased pain and process. “LIFE,” it seems God still screamed, “MUST CONTINUE!” However, life would be found interwoven with great cost; it would be tied to toil, a burden to birth.
It would birth the idle, the sluggard, the lazy; those whose reach for ease would try and drown out the command for toil. It would produce the wicked and slothful, covering and burying the potential of increase in a ground only dominated by the sweaty persistence of painful toil and backbreaking labor. Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathered her food in the harvest.
Poverty to the fool, sadly, cometh upon the beds of ease; the softened hands evidencing unworked fields. Soft hands and a fallow field must give rise to hardened hands and broken, receptive fields! Sow in tears and reap in joy! Sow the wind and reap its chaotic vanity.
Cast now the seed of obedience into the soils snared by its antithesis. Cast now into the blood that still crieth out from cursed soil; life that screams from the abode of death. Become that seed; that fruit of righteousness germinated by the wettenned soil of the firstfruit’s blood; that singular seed, promised and foretold to give birth to a nation likened to the sand and the stars.
Become a part of that great harvest; that whitened field whose stalks reach high into the heaven, evidencing life born of death. Become one that sows and reaps life; life that begets life; life that begets eternal life. Exercise dominion over the cursed and bring forth the blessed. Now…sow! Be not marked, as Cain was marked, by the simple fact that your final seed you had sown produced a harvest reflecting the curse of its source.