Adam's Challenge...

The Biblical creation story has been rolling around in my mind lately, and seemingly everyone else's...seems to pop up all over the place. Our church has studied/referenced the story over the last three weeks or so, I watched a couple "Does God Exist" debates (My favorite was between Rabbi Wolpe and Atheist Sam Harris - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2329504685124044436#), listened to Dave Bazan's album "Curse Your Branches" and read the creation narrative myself several times. As one of the most widely known stories in the world, it is important for everyone to understand it to the best of their ability, even if you disagree with it. There are many discussions surrounding the story, and I thought to write more on questions like, "Why put the tree there at all?", "How is the Biblical account different from other creation narratives?", "How does science mesh with this story?" and so on.
This was the thought, however, that actually moved me enough to write something brief. In Genesis 2:19-20, Adam is given a task by God.
"Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field."
It struck me that we are still doing Adam's job...it is not nearly finished yet. Sure there was the fall, redemption and a few other things, but it occurred to me that this task, which predates the fall, is part of our created responsibility as the human race. To understand and name God's creation. Think of relatively recent discoveries: Hubble's Telescope and the vast rapidly expanding universe, black holes and super novas, the discovery of cells, DNA (Even germs were undiscovered as recently as the Civil War), research in nearly every scientific field is revealing new and deeper levels of understanding as to how the world around us functions...its astonishing. Each piece of it carries God's unmeasurable mark of both immense creativity and order. Just a thought...what part of God's creation are you naming? What are you discovering?