Friend of StrangersSample

After creating Adam and Eve in his image, God continues to bless all humanity and give us a threefold mission.

The first blessed mission is “be fruitful.” Of course, for humanity to increase, Adam and Eve must multiply and have children.

The second blessed mission is to “fill the earth,” i.e., to migrate. God wants Adam and Eve, and by extension all of humanity, to wander, to move, to discover, and to spread across the earth. Just as God's glory and presence fill the whole earth, God wants man to migrate and fill it with their presence. God does not want humanity to stay in the same place and hide behind walls and borders.

The third blessed mission is to “subdue it”, i.e., to be God's representatives on earth and to take care of God's creation. While animals are also created by God, humans are created in His image. Humans are different from animals and become like God's co-rulers on earth.

All three of these missions are interrelated. To rule the whole earth, humans need to migrate. To fulfill the whole earth, man needs to multiply. So, migration is directly linked to the divine mandate to rule over creation and one of the aspects of what it means to be a human being made in the image of God.

Just as sexual reproduction and man's rule over the earth are divine gifts and missions that God blesses, migration is a divine gift and a mission that He blesses. By fulfilling all three of these divine missions, human beings, being in the image of God, become God's representatives on earth and participate in His continued creation of a beautiful world.