Giving and Preparation and Learning and The Creation and stuff

I haven't been blogging much lately, mostly waiting until the end of the year for the final shakedown. But I felt during church today that I need to blog a bit more. I had a handful of things running through my head that I wanted to blog about. And as the day has worn on, more things have come to me.

The thought I have in mind right now came as I was driving home listening to The RM CD, some modernized old children's songs, hymns, and Janice Kapp Perry tunes. On came "Give Said the Little Stream," a song that has unfortunately gotten a little of a bad rap because it's not as doctrinal as many of the other children's songbook songs. But I think a little injustice was done the song. It does have some good values--true perhaps not as good as some others--but still an important lesson, that of giving. As I listened to the song, I thought about all that water gives. It gives and it gives--water to help the plants grow, water to help us keep clean, to name the two most important. But what does water want or need? Does it need the algae at the bottom of the lake? Does it need the plants? Does it need people? Not for its existence, nope. For it to stay clean, perhaps, but it only gets polluted because of people, so that's kind of circular. What does water need to exist? Two hydrogen molecules and an oxygen molecule. In other words, it really only needs God. Its function is to give.

Then this led me to think about the order of creation, from Genesis. Wasn't water one of the first things? Well, no, actually. It was just there.
1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 
3. And God said, Let there be light and there was light.
4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

But we did need to have gravity to keep it one spot, so God gave us gravity:

6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And then, as the story goes, you know, we got land, because everything He created after would need land. And then He created grass and plants and stuff because his other creations would need plants. And then we got the sun, moon, and stars because everything needs to rest and have light to get work done. And then He brought forth all of the animals because we would need animals for many, many reasons to live. And then came us. In short, little by little, He brought forth everything that would be needed before it was actually needed, so it would be ready for the creatures, plants, and ultimately the people who would need it. And of course, we were the final creation before He rested because everything created up to the end was created for us because we'd needed. We're the reason for all the creations.

But that's not the end of the lesson. Is Give Said the Little Stream just about how nice water is just to give to us all the time? No, of course not. It's an object lesson. The obvious lesson is that we're supposed to give, too. If we want to become like our Father in Heaven who has given us EVERYTHING, then we need to give, too. But it does go further still. He prepared everything for us that we'd need before we needed it. And it was well organized and planned out. That's the nature of God. He is a God of order. And since He's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, then we can expect that He'll prepare everything we need still--such as the work that I need right now.

This reminds me of a little incident many years ago when I was visiting my sister and she was working on preparing lunch for her little boy. He was sitting in his chair crying and almost bawling that he wanted his food. He wasn't a baby, so he could talk and could have exercised a little patience, but he was still little, so it was understandable. Nonetheless, what he would have seen if he had turned around was that his mother was working on it the whole time and it was almost ready. He might have thought he needed it "right now" but he also needed to learn some patience. Just like we do. The Lord is preparing things and we'll have what we need when we need it, but in meantime, we can learn a little patience and as we're older, sometimes more than patience--lots of other lessons to be learned. Of course, it goes a step further, too. When we give, it's important for us to plan and be organized so that we aren't too hasty and end up not being as helpful as we otherwise could be.