Indescribable: The Goodness in God’s Creation (Genesis 1:1-2:3)
“From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea, creation’s revealing Your majesty…” – Chris Tomlin 🤩
Dear important image-bearer,
Yes, that’s you, and it’s
me, too. What am I talking about? Read this poem quietly or out loud:
The Creation (Genesis 1:1-2:3)
by Celina
In the beginning, God caused the
birth
Of the heavens and the earth,
A planet empty and formless
Who’s surrounded with darkness
With God hovering over its waters.
He commanded the existence of light
And it was good in His sight.
He separated night and day
Whose times came one after the other.
This was the first day.
Between the waters, God made an
expanse.
He placed it above the water, separated
by His hands.
There was water below and water up
high.
He called the expanse the sky.
This was the second day.
God commanded the waters to gather
And spoke forth the appearance of dry
matter.
He called the ground “land” and the
waters “seas.”
Then He told the land to produce
plants and trees.
This was the third day.
God commanded for lights to govern
the times.
The sun’s the day’s sign; the moon’s
the night’s sign.
He also made the stars fixed in an
array.
This was the fourth day.
God commanded creatures to exist—
In the sky, birds and in the waters,
fish.
He created great whales and animals
of the sea.
He created birds with wings to fly
freely.
He commanded them to be fruitful and
many.
This was the fifth day.
God commanded for animals to be in
the land living—
Livestock, every wild animal, and
every crawling thing.
Then God created man after His
likeness.
He made a man and a woman whom He
blest.
He told them that the earth’s for
them to replenish
And rule over and fruits are for
their mouths to cherish
And that the green plants are every
animal’s dish.
This was the sixth day.
From all His work, God rested.
This is the day He made holy and
blessed.
This was the seventh day.
Did you see? You were the
last creation that came to be! “Save the best for last,” they say. Let’s
appreciate how we’re made on the sixth day. God prepared everything first for
humanity to live. He made light for all things to be visible. He made the sky
to display the sun, moon, and stars, which made the time knowable. He made the
land for plants to grow and for animals and humans to live in. He made plants
to provide food for animals and humans. He made animals for humans to take care
of. That was the design—for earth to be filled with vegetarian humans and
animals. The Fall that cursed us all is the reason why we live in a world where
one species eats another. The article “Creation’s Original Diet and the Changes
at the Fall” shows animals can live on plants alone and gives explanations on
how some became carnivores
You know how every story needs to have a conflict or every thesis needs a problem? Not this story, no! This is a picture-perfect poem—how God created the world, not the literal poem I wrote. Everything was good. The whole creation was very good (Genesis 1:31).
The first spoken creation
was light. What light exactly? We don’t know. It’s not the sun or any star.
It’s really just light, the electromagnetic radiation detected by human’s sight
Next, God created the sky. Don’t you just love seeing colors shift to tell that night is nigh? Then the night shows a display of constellations. This sky or expanse created is outer space. The celestial bodies created in the fourth day was “in” this expanse (v. 14).
In the third day, dry land appeared, the seas were gathered, plants were manufactured, and, voila, a blue and green Earth was structured. Earth is a beauty and all its cycles are many a pageantry. We got the water cycle, the life cycle of a plant, and the earth’s rotation and revolution. Even the earth’s a cycle; what I mean is it’s a circle—circular in shape, that is.
Then, God created the
sun, moon, and every star, which all look so little from afar. They are to tell
the time and to give light. The sun and the moon were said to be the ones to
tell time, but the stars can, too. You just need to find the North Star and the
Big Dipper, and you have a 24-hour clock like in the picture below
Fifth are the birds and sea creatures, animals who either fly or swim as their main postures. They’re talented creatures. Birds can sing and some can mimic human speech. Mental Floss has an article titled “15 Fish With Amazing Talents” and to name some, we have the clownfish who can change gender, the peacock flounder who can quickly change its color, and the mudskipper who can climb trees (Mancini, 2016).
The last creations were animals and humans. Animals are fascinating creatures. They come in different forms and sizes. I love the game Animal Crossing so much. It’s a game where humans live with dressed standing animals, and we all do the same things, speak the same language, and live on fruit. It’s like a picture in Isaiah where “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them (Isaiah 11:6).”
Human beings are intelligent species. We do not just have brains; we also have beauty. We’re made in the image and likeness of God. That to me is what makes us distinctly good-looking. Back to the brains, we are given intelligence to rule over all creation. That gives us importance, and a job. We have to take care of our surroundings and the living beings on it. This is love, and we were told to fill the world with it. We were made to be loving, so to fill the earth with humans is to fill the world with love.
Lastly, God rested. He set a day for it. That’s how vital relaxation is. We are to set a day in a week where we don’t go to work. In this pandemic era, almost all the things I do are in front of a screen: I do my online studies in my laptop, I listen to the Bible from either my laptop or phone, I read the commentary on my tablet, I play Animal Crossing on our Nintendo Switch and on my phone, and occasionally, I make YouTube videos on my laptop. It has affected my eyes so much that I get headaches, so what I do is on Sundays, I don’t open my laptop. It is imperative that we rest.
What I got from Through the Word’s devotional on Genesis 1, is we should stop daily to see how good the day was (Langham). God took moments to see that what He created was good (vv. 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, & 31). What I did in this epistle is to show the goodness in each of God’s creations. I hope we do this every day. Let’s daily wake up praising God for He has given us another blessing of a day, one good thing to be thankful for. Let’s nightly end our twenty-four hours thanking God for the blessings that day.
Praise God for creating
everything in His perfect way!
With love,
Celina <3
References
Kher,
A. (n.d.). How to Tell Time With Stars? Retrieved from Time and Date:
https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/tell-time-by-stars.html
Lacey, T., &
Hodge, B. (2019, August 10). Light Before the Sun. Retrieved from
Answers in Genesis:
https://answersingenesis.org/days-of-creation/days-without-sun-what-was-source-light/
Langham, K. (n.d.). Genesis 1 | In the Beginning God. Genesis
Explained Part 1 | Origins. Westminster, California, United States of America:
Through the Word.
Mancini, M. (2016, March 3). 15 Fish With Amazing Talents. Retrieved from Mental Floss: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/58380/15-fish-amazing-talents
Stambaugh, J.
(1991, August 1). Creation’s Original Diet and the Changes at the Fall.
Retrieved from Answers in Genesis:
https://answersingenesis.org/animal-behavior/what-animals-eat/creations-original-diet-and-the-changes-at-the-fall/
Stark, G. (2021,
May 7). Light. Retrieved from Britannica.com:
https://www.britannica.com/science/light
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