3. Need!

This image was created by Lindsay Cox, a Salvationist cartoonist and Territorial archivist for the Australian Southern Territory. Those stand-up collars, bonnets and even that tambourine nestled between the two horrified lady salvos engender a culturally-felt nostalgia don’t they? – Especially for Salvationists. Paradoxically, wasn’t it, “need,” that originally provoked this inyesvative expression of evangelical militancy?

Question: Genesis occurs:

A. When we say “no” to need and “yes” to status quo.
-or-
B. When we say “yes” to need and “no” to status quo.

Those Were the Days
Nostalgia’s warm embrace grips me every time I hear this 1969 hit, sung by Mary Hopkins, written by Gene Raskin, putting English lyrics to a Russian song:

Those were the days my friend,
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way
La la la la…

I remember it well, 1969: Beatles, Bell Bottom Jeans, tie-die shirts, electric typewriters, pay phones, 35 cent gas, average salary - $4723, counter-culture, LSD, flower power, Haight Ashbury, free love, Woodstock, Easy Rider, Iron Curtain, communism, Coretta Scott King speaking from the pulpit of St. Paul's Cathedral in London (the first woman to do so), Nixon, Viet Nam, chemical warfare, race riots, student antiwar movement, Weather Underground, Operation Chaos. Ah yes, “Those were the days my friend…”

Chaos: “A state of utter confusion (Merriam-Webster).

Chaos is the incubator for creativity and innovation. Genesis occurs when we say “No!” to status quo (things as they were/are) and “Yes!” to need (things as they will be). Another word for status quo is, “culture.”

Cultures collide.
Chaos ensues.
Cravings arise.

Crave: “to have a strong desire for something” (Encarta).

Need-Based Response
Genesis is the creative response to our need-based cravings. John Stott said, “Vision begins with a holy discontent with the way things are.” Allow me to substitute the word, “vision,” with the word, Genesis, in this context.

Need: “Necessary, Essential.

Necessity: “The mother of invention” (Plato).

This idea is best illustrated in one of Aesop’s Fables, “The Crow and the Pitcher.”

A crow perishing with thirst saw a pitcher, and hoping to find water, flew to it with delight. When he reached it, he discovered to his grief that it contained so little water that he could not possibly get at it. He tried everything he could think of to reach the water, but all his efforts were in vain. At last he collected as many stones as he could carry and dropped them one by one with his beak into the pitcher, until he brought the water within his reach and thus saved his life.

This truth of this fable is illustrated historically and visually at the following website:

Schoolhouse Rock – Mother Necessity

“They need me, they need you, they need…” Genesis people creatively respond to a need and fill it!