I’ve recently been setting up a new home and therefore spending more time than I would ever choose trying to assemble furniture. If I never see another Allen key for the rest of my life, I will be a very happy man. Needless to say, the results have not been uniformly impressive.
The best appraisal I can give myself at the end of a sweaty day is, "That'll just have to do." And when you're talking about a bed that you'll be spending around a third of your life lying on, "that'll have to do" is not great. I already seem to have done my back in as a result of it.
With God it is very different. There is a rhythm to the account of creation in Genesis 1. The work takes place over six days, with a repeated refrain: "God saw that it was good." God is evidently not inattentive to what he is making. He doesn't start one aspect of creation and then turn his attention to the next project.
He finishes each act, steps back (as it were) and appraises it. As he assesses each day's work of creation, he is fully pleased with the outcome. So again and again we read, "It was good," "It was good," "It was good."
That is, until we turn up. At the end of the day when God has made humanity in his image, male and female, he says something different: "It was very good" (Gen. 1:31).
The difference male and female image bearers makes to his creation is to lift it from "good" to "very good." Needless to say, it is not a track record we maintain through the rest of the Bible; but the fact remains, there is a deep fundamental very-goodness to the way God has designed us to be, and our being made as men and women is at the heart of it.
