S108P1 – Creation story: good light

Gen. 1:1-5

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

This might be difficult to imagine.  God created everything that has been created, which means that He was here long before all things and on his own.  John chapter 1 gives us additional insight into what “the beginning” looked like.  The Father, his Son, and his Spirit resided together before all things.  They were perfectly beautiful and perfectly harmonious, complete in every way.  Yet, not even light existed.  The One who is the brightest shining light we can know, the One who will be our light instead of the sun for eternity, did not start out as this bright star.  Our holy and perfect Godhead existed but in the darkest of places.

This is where we are in the beginning of the creation story.  God is there, but there is not yet any light to illuminate him.  Then, He creates the heavens and a formless void we call Earth, physically ambiguous and itself lacking illumination.  Darkness masks the empty landscape, what lies below and above, but the Creator desires that his work would be seen.  He creates light with nothing more than the command of his voice, and it pleases him.  He sees the goodness in this new phenomenon, and the course of our days is set.  The formless mass appears, and the deep is no longer hidden.  In an instant, God causes all that can be seen to be seen.  He has illuminated the first seeds of his creation.

Oh, that we would be able to understand the beginning, the existence of nothing, the lack of even light in a place that was really no physical place!  This is a picture that requires faith for acceptance.  To see what God has seen, to witness the inception of all we have known, is much too much for our minds.  There was a time when everything we know today was a mere vision of the future, but God saw that it would be good to bring all things into existence.  This is the start of his creation story, and perhaps He can give us some new revelation of this glorious unveiling.  Father, allow us to understand this great event at creation’s starting line, with dreams and visions of its beautiful unfolding.