"Grab a Bible and read Genesis 1. Consider the wonder of God's creation."
The Bible I ended up with is The Message, excellent! =D I love this version! Reading this today, I can really picture what's going on: "Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness." I can imagine this, because I've felt it. Bottomless emptiness. Nothing. Darkness. No hope. No life. But then, in Genesis, what's the first thing God does? "God spoke: 'Light!' And light appeared." God spoke. One single word. "Light!" And it was there. God spoke into the darkness, and with the coming of light, the darkness is gone: "God...separated light from dark." Light and darkness cannot mingle together. There is either light, or there isn't. Even the faintest bit of light pushes away darkness. Amazing! God has done this in my life! Into my darkness, God spoke, "Light!" And there was light. There was hope. There was a promise of more to come in life. "God saw that the light was good." Indeed!
As I read through this chapter, I can't help but picture God smiling as He creates everything. Everything He makes, He sees it as good. In my own experience, when I make something good, and I take a moment to step back and really look at it, at the whole picture when I finish a part, I can't help but smile. Right now I'm working on a cross-stitch project, and every time I hold it out to look at the big picture, I smile. Picture God creating stuff, using words to just make everything appear, stepping back after each day to see the big picture, and saying, "It is good." What else would He do but smile? =)
I like God's pattern during the six days of creation. The first three days are spent creating Day and Night, sky and water, and land. The next three days are spent filling Day and Night (sun, moon, stars), filling sky and water (birds, fish), and filling land (vegetation, animals).
And after all that, He makes man. And not just any kind of creature man, but rather, man made in God's own image: "reflecting the nature of God." We are mirrors, reflecting God. God created us to "be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, and, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of the Earth." God has given us the Earth to take care of it. But I don't think we've done a very good job of it... Nowadays there's so much talk about globacl warming, polar ice caps melting, holes in the ozone layer, the list could go on, and that's just about the environment! We don't even take care of each other: child labour, poverty, hunger, slavery, human trafficking. We are not taking care of anything except ourselves. And in the long run, we're only going to end up destroying ourselves.
"God looked over everything He had made; it was so good, so very good!" He says this AFTER creating humans. We are included in that statement! God sees us and says we are so very good! I often wonder: does He still say that? I'm reminded of the song "Wonder" by Jaylene Johnson. There's a line that goes, "Do you look at what you've made, do you look at what you're making every day, do you still look down and say, 'It is good'?" I guess that question in itself could open up a big theological can of worms...
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