God only creates “good” things.

Long before the techniques of italicizing or emboldening text, repetition was the ancient author’s literary tool to highlight an idea. So the authors of Scripture would make their point by repeating something over and over again. For this very reason, the creation narrative repeatedly depicts God declaring the goodness of everything he made. “It was good… . It was good… . And it was very good” (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). In what might appear as pompous, self–congratulatory commentary, we are actually blessed by the knowledge of God’s own recognition of the brilliance of his creation. He is well aware that what he has made is valuable, right, and good. Repeating this refrain each day, the biblical author makes clear that this world is fundamentally made good. The intrinsic goodness of creation speaks to an important practice of Sabbath living—the need of humanity to reflect on and delight in the goodness of what God has made.

The intrinsic goodness of creation speaks to an important practice of Sabbath living—the need of humanity to reflect on and delight in the goodness of what God has made.

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Once, when sharing my faith with an agnostic friend, I was asked to make my greatest argument for God’s existence. I uttered one simple word: mangoes. I was not talking about just any mangoes. I was talking about fresh, ripe, just–off–the–tree mangoes; about have–to–change–your–shirt–afterward mangoes. Mangoes, I explained, were my greatest argument for God’s existence. To this day, I cannot eat a mango and say with a straight face that this is a world that has been invented by a jerk. Or that something so delicious could come from nowhere. Creation is good. Why? Because God is good. And his goodness is reflected in what he makes. A mango, as part of creation, is God’s love letter to humanity.

There is an Indian restaurant in my neighborhood called Bollywood Theatre. I once went to lunch with my friend Todd Miles, a theologian at a local seminary. Taking in our first few bites, he blurted out, almost surprised by his own proclamation, “You know, A. J., when you think about it, food didn’t have to be this good!” One could argue that this is the thesis statement of Genesis’s first two chapters—a good God makes a good creation. Creation is not bad. Creation is not “just okay.” Creation is good. The words of Martin Luther echo this refrain: “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” Were it not for lack of space, I bet Luther meant to include mangoes and Indian curry. In his goodness, God delights in giving us food that did not have to be this good. And then, if we did not already grasp his goodness, he decides to give us taste buds.

The good news: mangoes and Indian food are merely a foretaste of the good world to come. Consider the final words of the old English martyr John Bradford, who reportedly declared as he died on the stake: “Look at creation—look at it all! This is the world God has given to his enemies; imagine the world he will give to his friends.” Bradford’s point: we cannot even begin to imagine heaven’s mangoes or Indian food. God’s good world is a world of delight, one that offers only a preview of the majestic, unimaginable world to come. A world of goodness and blessing, joy and generosity, and, of course, glorious rest. What is the Sabbath but a day to reflect on God and all the love letters sent our way? The Sabbath is a celebration, a day of rejoicing over the goodness of what has been made and who made it.

Now, everything God makes is “good” in the creation story. But there is only one thing in the creation story that is called “holy.” The only thing God deems as qadosh, or “holy,” in the creation story is the Sabbath day. The earth, space, land, stars, animals—even people—are not designated as qadosh. The Sabbath day was holy. Heschel speaks of the Sabbath as the “sanctification of time”: “This is a radical departure from accustomed religious thinking. The mythical mind would expect that, after heaven and earth have been established, God would create a holy place—a holy mountain or a holy spring—whereupon a sanctuary is to be established. Yet it seems as if to the Bible it is holiness in time, the Sabbath, which comes first.”

This holiness of the Sabbath is one of the distinctive marks of Jewish theology, Heschel contends. Again, it is telling that there is no mention of a specific, sacred place in the creation story. There is only a sacred day. While space and location are significant, it is important to note that the exact location of Eden is omitted. Yet we know that the Sabbath day is holy.

>Now, humans cannot make anything holy. The day’s holiness is assumed. They were to keep the Sabbath holy, which was already holy before they came to it. This does not mean that there are days that are not holy. Time itself is holy. Every day is a holy day. In contrast to our notions of time, the biblical tradition states that all time is sacred (Pss. 31:15; 139:16; Isa. 60:22). It is not only theologically inaccurate but also dangerous to suggest that some days are sacred and others are not—time is in itself the first thing designated as sacred. All time is holy, not just the Sabbath. But the Sabbath is set aside as a unique kind of holiness.