In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth....God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Gen. 1:1, 31)
Everything, truly everything, begins here. The story of the Bible—more, the history of the universe—starts with the simple statement, "In the beginning God created," and the rest of the chapter fills in what he created: stars, oceans, plants, birds, fish, mammals, and finally man and woman.
Genesis 1 says little about the processes God used in creation; you'll find no explanations of DNA or the scientific principles behind creation. But the opening chapter of the Bible does insist on two facts:
Creation was God's work. "And God said. . . . And God said. . . . And God said"—the phrase beats in cadence all the way through the chapter, a chapter that mentions the word God thirty times. And in this first chapter, the very first glimpse we have of God is as an artist. Butterflies, waterfalls, bottlenose dolphins, praying mantises, kangaroos—they were all his idea. This entire magnificent world we live in is the product of his creative work. God, no one else, is the master of the universe, and all that follows in the Bible reinforces the message of Genesis 1: Behind all of history, there is God.
Creation was good. Another sentence tolls softly, like a bell, throughout this chapter: "And God saw that it was good." In our day, we hear alarming reports about nature: the ozone layer, polluted oceans, vanishing species, the destruction of rain forests. Much has changed, much has been spoiled since that first moment of creation. Genesis 1 describes the world as God wanted it, before any spoiling. Whatever beauty we sense in nature today is a faint echo of that pristine state.
Captain Frank Borman, one of America's Apollo astronauts, read this chapter on a telecast from outer space on Christmas Eve. As he gazed out of his window, he saw earth as a brightly colored ball hanging alone in the darkness of space. It looked at once awesomely beautiful, and terribly fragile. It looked like the view from Genesis 1.
Life Question: When was the last time you noticed, really noticed, the beauty of the natural world?
