It’s All About the Goo
By Ted Swartz
April 7, 2015
Green rooms in churches offer a wide variety of comfort and proximity to the stage: Sometimes there are plenty of comfy couches, quiet with tasteful décor—other times you just know you’re in a church. Occasionally these co-opted spaces provide inspiration and significant philosophical thought. Warming up for a Listening for Grace show at Steinman’s Mennonite in Baden Ontario, I was struck by this Sunday School poster…I was in the middle of running lines, specifically the preacher relating the passage in Genesis where he notes: “In the beginning of this book the creator saw…that it was good”
And God saw that it was good.
God created us.
God created you.
And God saw
That is was goo—
Amen.
Yes! Great thoughts young mind…
From one who has often thought of himself as simply goo, ready to be transformed…or in the face of failure….or when I’ve hurt someone around me—goo is all we are…
BUT there is a D floating on behind…making it good.
Amen my young friend, amen.
We can never take for granted what our children are thinking. Many times, in spite of their innocence, they get it faster than we do, albeit sometimes inadvertently. What we adults need to remember is that they are learning every waking moment … they learn from what we do and say, how we live our lives every day. They learn the good and the not-so-good, as well as how to conduct themselves as Christians (or not). The influences in school and other venues are very persuasive, too. The best we can do is to stay close to them and listen. If we listen and appreciate their ideas, they’ll begin to emulate us as role models and not treat us as outsiders intruding on their lives.
I love little children who believe that “God is goo…” They make us laugh at our foibles, something greatly needed in the modern era.
When I think of “God is goo…”, I think of immature children (which is most of us, regardless of our ages) still in our formative stages. From the moment of birth through old age, we are continually forming and reforming, creating and recreating, thinking and rethinking, maturing and transforming. The greatest tragedy is dying before the ‘pieces of our live’s puzzle’ have time to come to fruition.
Back to “God is goo…”.
“This innocent statement reminds me of Thornton Wilder’s play, “Our Town”. When Emily, a young Puritan woman and the main character, dies prematurely at an early age, in heaven she misses her family and friends.
At her bequest, God grants Emily permission to return to Earth, but only for a day. Needless to say, Emily is ecstatic.
To her sorrow and surprise, Emily sees her friends and family from another set of eyes.
In lieu of the routines she had so grown to love, Emily notices how her loved ones ignore each others’ feelings: How they take for granted simple joys, how they live their lives, day after day, as though there would always be a tomorrow, and how they miss the depth of relationships, thereby ignoring their deeper meanings.
Emily returns to heaven weeping. “Earth!” she cries, “You are too beautiful to realize!”
Wilder’s point is profoundly universal: Genesis 1:16-18
… From the human perspective, ‘God created ‘goo’.’
… From God’s perspective: “God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars: (vs.17) – “God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth” and (vs.18) – “…, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was GOO…D!”
‘Goo’+ ‘God’= GOOD! AMEN!