The First Three Days of Creation: A Way to Order Our Lives Part 1

No matter how hard I try, I cannot move on from the first three chapters of Genesis.  Every time I revisit the account of the creation of the cosmos and the fall of mankind, a new layer is peeled back to reveal yet another beautiful truth that I not only intellectually and philosophically understand and relate to, but can also resonate with experientially.  In my most recent accidental psychoanalytic reading of the first chapter of Genesis I began to see a pattern that I had never noticed before, a pattern that could be most helpful to us in our daily lives, and this is where I usually have the most fun in my studies of the Scriptures, discovering those deeply hidden, primordial patterns that we can grab onto and employ in our lives.

 Before I get into the nitty gritty I want to preface with two things.  The first being that I did not set out with the specific goal of discovering a deep pattern, but rather a simple desire to hear the beautiful depiction of God creating the world we live in.  Secondly, this is an experimental interpretation of what I have observed, not an exhaustive or extensive theological breakdown of the Genesis creation, as if I or anyone could do that.  Okay, now that we have that out of the way, let us begin. 

 As I read Genesis 1 for the thousandth time, something began to jump off the pages and grab my attention, and that, as I have already mentioned a few times, is a particular pattern within each day of creation.  The more that I study the creation account, alongside many commentators on the text, such as Jonathan Pageau, Jordan Peterson, Father Stephen De Young, the more these patterns begin to reveal themselves to me in the text and in my own lived experience. And that is precisely the key, pattern(s), not just one or two, but a plethora of sophisticated, foundational patterns that create the basis for Western civilization as we know it.  The text begins with God, the Uncreated one who is the creator of all, who has no beginning or end, the Alpha and Omega, who, when asked by Moses what He is called, responds with “I AM.”  More specifically and beautifully, we have the Trinity depicted in the first three verses of the Bible, 

 “In the beginning God(here we have the Father) made the heavens and the earth, the earth was invisible and unfinished, and darkness was over the deep. The Spirit of God(here we have the Holy Spirit) was hovering over the face of the waters.  Then God said(here we have the Word, or the Son), “Let there be light”; and there was light.” Genesis 1:1-3

 Although more subtle and less obvious, the second person of the Trinity, the Son, is famously described as the “Word of God”, who through Him everything was brought into being(John 1:1-3).  I am pointing this out because it is the crucial element to formulating any pattern, theology, idea from the Scriptures, if we don’t understand this, who God is, who made the world and everything in it, we will misread all sorts of things into the Scriptures and subsequently misinterpret them and misapply them to our lives.  So, here we have the Triune God set to give us our beginning through the establishing and creating of all things. 

 Some translations say this about the beginnings of the earth: “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.”  I don’t know about you, but I would struggle to draw what that looks like.  There is, simultaneously, something of a black hole that has no distinguishable, geometrical shape, and a darkness that is hovering over this mysterious “deep”, which is described as “waters”.  I am no scientist or astronomist, but it seems something strange is afoot!  My professional commentary on this description is, “that’s whacky, but kind of cool at the same time.”  Those with much more educational prowess describe what is being depicted as the “primordial chaos and potentiality that is the foundation of everything that now exists.”  Sounds good to me!  With that in mind,  I will now introduce the pattern that has begun to reveal itself to me.  

 Each one of our lives, at its outset, can be defined as a potential for seemingly limitless possibilities.  We have no control over who our parents are, what country they live in, the language they speak, socio-economic status, cultural context, and so on and so forth.  These are all elements that we will be confronted with and will have to learn to navigate through; however that may look like is of course, subject to the particular context and your ability to navigate well.  Although this is not a perfect analogy, I do believe that there is something to glean from it.  There are things out of our control, and that is the vast expanse of possibilities and potentialities that is afforded, given the world that we live in, the world that was set up by God.  These primordial, chaotic waters are just that, a limitless expanse of potentialities that we are subject to as we come into the world.  But remember, in accordance with the Genesis account, this is no accident, it has a purpose, it has a direction, and we will, step by step, gain insight on what exactly that purpose is and what that means for us through the first three days of creation. 

 DAY 1: God’s Good Light

 So far, we have the Triune God,  a dark, formless, invisible void that is the beginning of the earth, and chaotic, mysterious waters.  What does He do next? Well, what is it that allows us to move about in the world, that allows us to see?  Light, God creates light.  God calls this light good and differentiates it from the darkness.  We could think of this good light as the fundamental way that we are able to progress through the world.  It is by light that we know where to go, when to go, illuminates the world around us, and also shows us what darkness is.  The fact that the light is called good is a detail we shouldn’t pass over too quickly and is the very means by which we can differentiate and perceive that which is illuminated.  This is the first step in dealing with the dark waters of potentiality and possibility of reality, God’s good and guiding light.  

 I will end there today as this is turning out to be much more nuanced and lengthy than I was originally planning for.  Something for you to ponder on before we explore the following days of creation, take a moment to consider all that it is that you do not know about your life, both in the present and on into the future.  Consider the indefinite weightiness of that, when you have done that, usually takes about an eternity to do, now pay attention to that which you know about, your daily habits, the current season of life that you are in, your relationships, your job, your hobbies.  What is it that is being most illuminated to you? What is bothering you? What is pulling on your attention more than others?  Once you have identified that, and of course it could be multiple things, pay attention to it, whether it is “good” or “bad,” pay attention to it, for it might be trying to tell you something.  Allow God’s good and illuminating light to speak to you as you pay attention.

With that, I bid you farewell. Until next time fellow adventurers.