I wrote this for our chaplain meeting yesterday. I decided that I’d share it with you. The examples are for us. But the idea, I’m guessing may apply to you, too.

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I was listening to a conversation with Thomas McKenzie the other day. They were talking about Genesis 1, the telling of the creation of the world. 

What’s striking about that story, what we miss from time to time as we read it, is that there is reflection built into the telling.

I mean, we point often to the fact that God saw each thing was good, but that humans were very good. That part we get. We are special, we are awesome.

But the act of finishing a bit and stepping back and acknowledging that it is done and it is good, that’s a big deal.

Many of us, or maybe mostly just me, are consumed with what’s next. But we run the risk of mortgaging the future with worry. We walk into work afraid of what we are going to do wrong, what might happen that we can’t resolve. In our minds, and sometimes in conversations, we defend, we explain, we anticipate, we worry. We miss, often completely, all the things that we did right. We don’t honestly reflect.

God didn’t do that.

As part of creation was finished, God paused and saw that it was good.

And then moved on to the next project.

As we are in our first staff meeting following the two year anniversary of the troubles, perhaps we can stop. The situation was not good. Many people died. Many people still suffer. Most of us are still troubled. “This is hard” comes to my mind far more quickly than “This is good.”

That said, we completed some things. We can call them good.

We have given families support. We can call that good.

We have written notes. We have found names. We have found that there are no names We have closed loops. We have found the dead end. We can call that good.

We have done as much as we possibly could and then passed on the information clearly for the next colleague to keep telling the story. We can call that good.

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We will have the next day, the next shift, the next crisis.

But we would serve our self and each other and God better if, from time to time we stop. We lay down the tools we use. And say, “This is good.”