In the beginning God spoke the universe into creation; by the words of His mouth, everything physical beings, colors, scents, tastes, and textures, came into existence. God speaks and it happens just as He said, and When He has finished for the day, He observes His work and upon inspection declares that it is good.
The Hebrew word is tove (long o) and it carries the meaning of something being good, pleasant, and excellent. When God is speaking here in Genesis 1, He sees His work as excellent, perfectly complete and impossible to improve on. That is how God works, when He does something, it is done in the most perfect way, a way that only He is capable of.
I've heard people point out the unique phrase in Genesis 1.31, that after God makes woman He declares what He had made very good. People like to say that woman was the crowning achievement of creation, and that it was when she was completed God saw something different, but that isn't the case. Yes, women are amazing; they were made to capture the beauty of God's nature and character in a way no other part of creation could. But it is not this one single act of creation that God declares better and above all of His other creation.
"God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good." (Gen. 1.31a). God looks at all of His creation, from light to woman, and declares the whole of creation to be very good. In that moment, at the end of day six, and yes my stance is six literal, 24-hour days because that is how the original audience would have heard the word yowm, God looks over everything and declares it very good. At the end of day six creation was complete, everything functioned exactly how God intended for it to, there was no sin, no corruption, and so God sees His completed work, lacking in nothing now, and declares it to be exceedingly excellent. It is not one single aspect that warrants this declaration, but the whole work.
Everything God does is excellent perfection. God is not a doer of half way, good enough to get by because He ran out of time before the deadline. Everything God does is done with intentional care, diligently completed, and and warrants the declaration of good. He is God, and is capable of nothing less. Since this is who God is, we need to exercise the same diligence in what we do.
In the movie The Last Samurai Tom Cruise plays an Army officer who is hired by the Japanese to train their army in the 1800's. In a battle he is forced to fight, knowing his troops aren't ready, he is captured by the Samurai he is sent to eliminate and taken to their remote mountain village. While he's there he observes their life style and notes that "From the moment they wake, they devote themselves to the perfection of whatever they pursue." That is how I want to live.
I cannot be good at everything, and honestly I don't want to be anymore. But the things I do, I want to continuously strive for perfection. I saw a quote, I believe from an unknown Delta Force operator, that said, "Amateurs train until they get it right, professionals train until they can't get it wrong." That is how I want to be. In everything I do, I want to work at it until I can't mess it up. Until I've done it properly so many times that it is second nature to do it the right way.
Everything God does, He does exceedingly perfect. As part of His creation, part that is made in His image, that is the way I am called to live. I am called to live with passion, striving for excellence, because that is the nature of the God whose image I am created in. God's work is excellence, and thought I cannot attain that level of perfection, because of who He is, I am to strive for that.
Fight the lion, 1 Peter 5.1-11
TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!
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