God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” (Gen. 1:28)
My dad died when I was only five years old. Fifty years later and with adult children of my own, I still yearn for my dad’s validation. Every child has an innate longing for their earthly father’s approval. Equally compelling is the truism that, in every human soul is the desperate longing for the validation of their Creator Father. As someone has said, there is a “God-shaped vacuum” in every heart, which can only be satisfied by our Creator.
The Creator knew this when he created and blessed Adam and Eve. His blessing gave them real significance. It was his blessing that gifted them with fruitfulness—the ability to be procreative—to reproduce their kind. We can well imagine Adam and Eve’s surprising joy over their discovery that they were pregnant with life, as we can imagine their surpassing joy when Eve gave birth for the very first time. So, too, can we imagine their abundant joy when they cradled their son for the very first time.
What joy we feel in the depth of our souls when we discover that we, like Adam and Eve, have been blessed by our loving Creator God! We have been blessed to be fruitful. Every day presents us with an opportunity to bring “many sons and daughters to glory” (Heb. 2:10).
Tell someone how God has blessed you! It will bless them.
Theodore Griffin is a graduate of Houghton College and Asbury Theological Seminary, and a doctoral student at Wesley Seminary. He is the lead pastor of Brown’s Chapel Wesleyan Church in Indiana.
© 2021 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
