We all need somebody…
Dancers FERNANDO BOTERO you need someone to dance with!
Then God said, “It is not good for the man to live alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.” (Genesis 2:18).
The passage then goes on to describe God making all the wild animals, and birds of the air, and man naming them – but none of them is quite right to be the perfect helper for man. He needed one of his own kind.
I am very tempted to make all kinds of comments about men needing women – but I won’t! But just one joke: Why was Adam created first? To give him the chance to say something! (sorry!!)
God recognised that it was no good for Adam to be all alone in the world, the only one of his kind. What I find interesting, and I’m not sure I’d noticed before is that Eve is created because he needs a helper. They need to work together. Eve is not put there for Adam to tell her what to do, neither is Eve put there to tell Adam what to do, she is to help him. They are to help each other – they need each other.
According to the dictionary, helping is about contributing strength, providing what is necessary to accomplish a task, to make easier. They are in this together, they each bring something, they need each other. Adam has been placed in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it – but he needs a helper. The task of looking after the world cannot be accomplished alone by any of us. We need each other. We may not want to marry them, but we need other people to help us, for us to help them – for the world to be safe and cared for.
The thought of Adam needing one of his own kind to help is carried through in it’s linked lectionary reading in Hebrews. God had spoken many times through the prophets, and that was good and helpful. But now he has also spoken through Jesus – who is not just like us, but is like God in every way. God has sent a total likeness of himself into the world to help us. To show us how God’s life should be lived, to hold the universe together – and to show us God’s forgiveness for the times we have got things wrong.
I’m never very good at this “Ooh he/she looks just like great auntie Mabel” when a baby is born. But we cannot deny family resemblances. When our eldest son was born, the first time our GP saw him, she said “You’ve no chance of leaving him anywhere! He is so obviously your son”. They did turn out to be very prophetic words, the poor boy is very much a “chip off the old block” in looks and ways. That’s what God knew we needed. Someone who was a chip off his block. So that is what he sent, that we might begin to get our head around what he is like.
We all need somebody. We need people who will help us. We need God, who shows himself to us in Jesus, who comes as one of us to help us, and share with us – always.
Dancers FERNANDO BOTERO Beyond Limits Chatsworth 2009
Pam's Perambulation 