Rest and Chiastic Poetry: Oh, how He loves us.

Two weeks ago my friend Kaitlin invited me to this bible history class that a man named Marty teaches each Wednesday and Friday at 7 am on campus. Since then my mind gets blown twice a week and I’ve found myself on fire to read books like Leviticus. I've been getting strangely excited to wake up at 6:30 (okay, 6:50) to learn about the Eastern perspectives on the bible. This is a pretty big statement for those who know me, especially those of you who heard how hard it was when I dropped my MWF 8 am graphic design class earlier this semester due to my inability to rise before 10. It seems God had different plans in mind for that time of the day (and on top of that, Resonate is offering a free graphic design class that starts next week so I’ll still get to play with my beloved Adobe programs each week and for His glory instead of a grade. What whattt).

Annnyways, this class sometimes makes me a bit jealous of everyone who was able to go to a bible college and learn about the literary structure and devices in the book, because I LOVE looking for puzzles inside of books and analyzing the strategies used in literature to find underlying meanings. The bible is so intellectually put together that you could literally do that for your entire life and still never fully understand its mystery, which makes sense when you realize that God is sovereign and knows everything. It’s an incredibly humbling read for a lit-crit brat like myself.

In a nutshell: Hoooly crap. God is smart. And loves His people. (aka all of us)

For example, let’s just skim some of the meaning that’s in Genesis 1 (the creation story). And by skim I mean I sound like a five year old reading Shelley’s Frankenstein saying that it’s a scary story about a monster.

In its original Hebrew, Genesis 1 is a poem/song and it’s written to the Israelites after they had been released from slavery in Egypt.

In Egypt, the only thing that the Israelites were identified with or judged by was their ability to produce: how many bricks they could make/lay each day. Even if they personally didn’t define themselves by this ability, if they couldn’t meet quota they would be killed and their wife and kids would be basically screwed for the rest of their lives, so they needed to produce to keep their families alive and well.

Once they were out of Egypt, there was this ingrained concept of their (lack of) worth as people and why they were on the earth. This is understandable…just take a psych/hd/soc class and you could only begin to imagine the emotional/spiritual damage these people must’ve had…helllloooo PTSD. This poem radically changes this view.

Chiastic poetry normally tells one story on the surface but also has hidden meanings that get emphasized if you look at the structure of the poem. It’s normally in an ABC/CBA or ABCABC format, and is loaded with repetition and parallelism. I wish I could explain it in more depth than this but I just can’t at the moment, nor do I really care to. It would take forever plus I just learned about them yesterday. You can go here or here or here if you want to have a better understanding of them.

I also feel like I need to reiterate that this is just ONE chiasm that happens in Genesis 1…there are many more embedded in each phrase, and Genesis 1 is a part of an even bigger chiasm that extends for most of the chapter (and debatably another in the entire bible). There’s not enough time and energy to explain it all. This post is long enough.

So here’s one chiasm that occurs that totally blew my brains and made me just realize even more how good God is:

Genesis 1:2 begins with nothing (God’s in v 1 before it all of course, which is a whole other verse that you could write pages on)—the earth is formless and void and chaotic waste.

                “let there be light” –God separates the light/dark (the light is GOOD) (v3-5)

                                God separates the sky/waters (v6-8)

                                                God separates land/seas/creates plants (it’s GOOD) (v9-13)

                God creates sun/moon/stars (it’s GOOD) (v14-19)

                                God creates birds/fish (GOOD) (v20-23)

                                                God creates animals (GOOD) and man (VERY GOOD) (24-31)

God realizes that “the heavens and the earth were complete” so he stops and rests and declares the seventh day a day set apart from all the rest (quadash).

So the passage is bookended with two ideas, one of chaotic nothingness and then very good completion and fulfillment. Guess what you find when you look at the word that’s smack dab in the middle of it all, in the original Hebrew? It’s in verse 1:14 where it’s talking about the seasons. But the word season is actually mo’ad. Mo’ad is a word used when God talks about His appointed times and festivals, namely the Sabbath.

And then throughout the books of law and the bible, God emphasizes how important and refreshing these times of rest are.

So think about this in the perspective of a people who came from a land where their identity was based on their production, and from a land where the story of creation told about how the gods were perpetually angry with the ungrateful humans, and then hear about how the earth was originally good and that the Creator loved them and believed they were very good and that they were the culmination of a very good creation? And how He wanted them to connect with Him through rest? All they had to do was trust the story, because when there wasn’t trust their lives would unwind before their eyes (see basically the rest of the bible for that). It all must’ve been mind-boggling and totally paradigm shifting.

I think this message of Genesis 1 really sticks out to me right now because I still need that reassurance that it isn’t about what I’m doing that matters at all; it’s about letting go and trusting the story that we were created by a good and loving God, even though so much of me wants to lean into the idea that I need to earn that love and that God’s annoyed or angry or disinterested in me. Those are such lies! But it’s hard to believe those things when you live in a culture that only cares about what you do, how much you have, what you can do for them, etc. Even in the Christian community, albeit subtly—service is important, but it’s easier to judge those who serve a ton as being “closer” with God or better/more mature Christians. This is disproved SO many times not only in the bible but in the present day too, yet it’s in my instinct to think this way. I’m a recovering cynic, okay?

The truth is we’re all equally screwed up, just in different areas. An even harder idea to wrap my mind around (especially since I’m so focused on self-improvement) is that we will always be equally screwed up, even if it surfaces in different areas. So when I’m out in Africa helping orphans, don’t be thinking I’ve turned into a miss-goody-two-shoes, because that kind of stuff gets to my head. I’m not. But I am redeemed and free from the chains and shame that come from the separation that occurs from that sin. Sin, and particularly shame from sin, makes us feel far from God or that He doesn’t love or care about us. Even to someone who professes to be a Christian, the idea of God’s love can seem abstract at times. But when we truly believe that Jesus took care of it all, that we are washed white as snow, for now and forever, God’s love is something that we can continually tap into. We become more aware that He has never left our side and cares more about us than we could possibly imagine.

One final thing about God’s love that I just recently was thinking about:

I always think about 1 Corinthians 13 as a verse for humans, to tell us what to do and how to love. But what about the whole, “we love because He first loved us” verse? I always hear pastors telling us to insert our names into the verses, but I think that while this can be humbling and convicting, inserting God into it is so much more life-giving, because He promises and tells us that He loves us always.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8a).

God is love; and this is the definition of love in the bible. Lean into this story. Trust this story. It’s a story of hope and goodness, not about avoiding fire and brimstone and quid pro quo. He’s not angry with you, doesn’t want you to fit yourself into a little Christian box because He’s so much bigger than our preconceived notions of Christianity (holy moly is this class breaking those walls down in my life, btw).

He wants you, like the Israelites, to stop stressing so much about producing and rest in His love. It’s always been there and He’s just waiting to wrap you in it, leaving you to be refreshed and rejuvenated and encouraged to continue living your life in creation.