Advent Fruit: Discovering that God Really Likes the Word 'Good'

Roxane Salonen shares a fruit of her Advent: the important reminder that God is pleased with His creation, including us.

In the first week of Advent, I discovered something very beautiful. Perhaps I’d known it before, but never like this. That’s the beauty of Scripture. We can never plumb its depths and can always find something applicable to any given moment of our lives.

For some reason, in the very first lectio divina reading of my Advent journey this year, I was struck anew with this simple phrase from Genesis: “God saw that it was good.” How many times had I heard or read that phrase? And yet this time, it grabbed me by the heart.

I’d just started my second year journeying with Fr. Joel Sember, author of Oriens: A Pilgrimage through Advent and Christmas, and was eager to learn what God wanted to reveal to me this year.

Reading the passage reflectively, I imagined God working very hard, then taking time to step back and assess His creation. As a writer, I can appreciate this. We don’t just plow through our work then submit it without taking time to ponder it. Did we say what we wanted to say? Are we pleased enough with the results, or does it need one more edit?

God paused, like we do when we create something, and felt compelled to add a word to His assessment: good. Of all the words He might have chosen to describe His creation, good was the one. Such a simple little word, but important to God, apparently.

And of course, when creating humans, He modifies His assessment, finding us not just good but very good.

In my Oriens journal for that day, I wrote to the Lord: “You did not just slap the world together and abandon it … and then you took time to admire it; to stand back and marvel at it.”

I imagined God pausing, folding His arms, looking around, and smiling, a twinkle in His eyes. That made me giggle a bit, but it also brought a tenderness into my reflection.

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Being made in God’s image and likeness, we can, I think, take a few hints from these notes:

God cares about goodness and sees the good in us. He made us good! We can rejoice in that. There is a goodness at the base of everything, so even though we, and the world, might stray from that, it is something to which we can return, by his grace. It is the beginning point, and the ending point, because God Himself is good.
We need to take time, like God did, to pause and assess how we’re doing; not only to notice our faults, which is necessary of course, but also, like our Lord, to take stock of the good we have done and brought to the world. But even before that, to remember that we are good because we came from God. From there, we can admire our own creations and notice the good in ourselves. We can, and should, take time from creating and doing, as did God, to delight at the goodness in ourselves and in others.
We can easily become distracted by all the things in this world, and in ourselves, that are not good. When we find ourselves going too far in that direction, maybe we can think about God delighting in the goodness of His creation, and instead of seeking out all the bad stuff, return, as often as necessary, to what is GOOD.

We are likely at the point in the Advent season when we are feeling a bit overwhelmed and a lot exhausted. Isn’t it nice to be reminded that even God took a breather to rejoice in what He had done? And that He was able to see the good in it, and dwell there for a while?

Click to tweet:
Even God took a breather to rejoice in what He had done. And He was able to see the good in it, and dwell there for a while. #CatholicMom

These insights came on Day 1 of Advent, and that was a gift, because I resolved then and there to bring them with me in the days and weeks ahead. And now, I am reminding myself again, and giving you permission as well, to gaze at the good in our lives, in our families, and in our everyday journeying with our Lord, who is not only good, or very good, but very, very good! He is, indeed, our good Father, and we can trust in Him, no matter the challenges we face.

May you have an abundantly good Christmas!

What fruits have come from your Advent this year? What good have you noticed this time around?

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