S150P1 – This precious Earth: something from nothing
Gen. 1:1-2
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
It might seem rather strange that Earth at one time was formless. In the past, reading this passage would create a picture in my mind of an oddly shaped mass with no clear rhyme or reason to its form. I imagined Earth as some kind of dark, unidentifiable blob. In actuality, the Hebrew word tohu translated as formless is also used to refer to the desert. It denotes not a lack of shape but a lack of purpose or function. Where the fertile soil of a field can be seen as having the function of growing fruit, the dry and barren sands of the desert produce nothing and simply are. This description is really about Earth at its inception having no actual function but merely existing, which is a big difference from what we see today.
Even those who eschew intelligent design and believe in the Big Bang and evolution by chance can agree that there is clear purpose and function to the greater ecosystem of the world. The interdependence of air and water and people and animals and plants works a certain way. The way that life is sustained on this planet can be tracked and charted and predicted by a history of patterns researched and followed over centuries or even millennia in some cases. Even the functions of the sun and moon as they affect this planet show this interdependence. It all works together. Now, this system is not currently perfect, but that should not detract from the marvel that it is. That which once did nothing now does so much.
There is something to be said about the fact that this creation story starts at the very beginning. God left out nothing regarding how that which we see came into being. The critical thing is that He shows us how far Earth has come. From nothing, he made a thing. That thing simply existed with no function. What appeared barren and purposeless eventually would bear life in perfection. In fact, it is with the dust of this very ground that God chose to form man. [2:7] What an awesome purpose Earth would serve, to help create the creature to bear God’s image. [1:26] Father, help us to appreciate this Earth You have created for our home now, and teach us to be good stewards of it.