you made us new and beautiful today
We come now to the Sixth Day in the Primal week of Genesis Chapter One, the day on which we are invited to contemplate the mystery of our own creation and of our being made in the image of God. Furthermore, because the Sixth Day is a Friday, we are moved as Christians to think of God’s loving response to our fall, of how, as Newman put it, ‘ a second Adam to the fight, and to the rescue came’. I have tried to gather some of these thoughts into the little roundel which is my reflection on this day. As before I have given you the Genesis passage to which my poem is a response and also enabled you to hear me read the poem by either clicking on the ‘play’ button or on the Roman Numeral. These poems will be gathered together with others in ‘Parable and Paradox’ my next book of poetry, to be published by Canterbury Press in the summer of 2016.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
You made us new and beautiful today,
Your Spirit softened us like morning dew,
Your Image shining from us through the clay,
You made us new.
You woke us and we knew ourselves in you,
We walked together at the close of day,
You trusted us and called us to be true.
When we forsook your love and turned away
You came and sought us where we hid from you,
And on the cross, in darkness, on this day
You made us new.
You came and sought us where we hid from you
Malcolm Guite 