Our task is to assess realistically the world in which we live, in the light of what God wants us to do in it. There is opposition - the world created by our sovereign Lord has been hijacked by an enemy, whom Jesus calls 'the evil one'. But there are milk and honey too. The creation mandate has never been revoked: God saw that his creation was good: and if you see it with the eyes of faith it's still good. Creation's sinfulness and fallenness is not its essence; goodness is. The Dominican scholar Matthew Fox is teaching us that Western Christendom has for too long been infected with a Pharisaic mindset: defining human reality especially in terms of sin rather than the Imago Dei, our likeness to the CreatorGod.

This reminds me of one person's description of surrealist art: a painting emphasizing the manure heap in the corner of the field, rather than the flowers all over it.

Help me to see the world with the eyes of spiritual reality a world that is good, as well as evil. And help me to distinguish between these two realities, Lord.. Amen