"...and God saw that it was good."

I've been thinking about God and the creation of the earth. God created the earth and all the beautiful plants and animals, and finally Adam and Eve. "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." (Genesis 1:31)

To me, this is a lesson in gratitude and self acceptance. God didn't say, "Well, personally I think it's great, but I don't want to say so and make my other god-friends think I think so much of myself." I think we are sometimes afraid to be happy with our progress. It's simply not the fashion to accept oneself. But God himself gives us a model: if we achieve our goals, it's OK to look upon it and say, "Look what I did! I finished what I set out to do! Rejoice with me!"

It seems that when I look around at my music friends who are struggling to create beauty, all we can see is our warts. Nowhere in Genesis does God say, "I accidentally created mosquitoes and pimples, so it's all for naught." He looked at the whole and saw that it was very good. I'm going to try to be like him: in music, in my family, in my housework, in my diet and exercise, and in my marriage. I'm going to try to look for the good of the whole and accept my best efforts as good.