Jesse Tree Devotional for November 30th

November 30th

Life

Today's reading: Genesis 1:24-31

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

The Christmas story begins in the beginning.

And in the beginning…there was no life.

No breath. No blazing sunsets, no laughing babies, no leaves whispering in the wind. No deer standing at wood’s edge, stilled and watching, no pungent oranges hanging in sun’s warmth, no dawn breaking on dangling dewdrops.

Just cold, barren nothingness. Like my life before You.

I too lived in deadness, in the dark shadows, groping in the black emptiness for something good.

Inexplicably, driven by mind-boggling, incomprehensible love, You came and breathed life—the

Abundant kind—into my nostrils…and the shadowy haunting of existence before You has given way to pulsing, pregnant, abundant, wondrously full Life in You.

You looked at all of the Life You created and said it was good. I look at this life You’ve created and can only agree. Yes, life is so very, very good.

Lord, I see it everywhere I look today. Life is good.

Because of You.