🌱Seed 😁Strongly-Agree 📓Journal
Importance: 50%
The Big Idea
I have decided to try something that I have heard about. Reading a story ten times to really soak it in and get familiar with it. It is a loose form of meditation on Scripture and one that I think will help me to actually dig deeper. So Here goes we will see how it end up!
First Time
12.5.24
I have been thinking a lot about the creation story being a very foundational part of scripture. without it we do not have a clear idea of why Jesus needed to come or eve what the creation is and why God would want to save it.
It also sticks out to me that we can read the the six days of creation as an unfolding. God starts with nothing and then literally day by day unfolds his creation step by step building and creating on top of the days before. What I think this lens points out is that we can actually see each day as informing us about what is most foundational and the right ordering of basic elements in creations. Light being the very first one. Without light we know that organic life would cease but I wonder if that also raises the questions of how we use light in our daily life really mattering. The way we illuminate our homes and streets actually all being more structurally vital than we often think to the way God created the world to work.
The second day is separating waters or creating space. If light is the basis of creations order space is right behind it in importance. This means that the way we treat the physical space around us is also super important.
I never realized that the first “God saw that it was good” does not come all the way until verse 10 in the middle of the third day! I guess this maybe this has to do with the fact that finally with earth and sea the creation has some definite form?
It definitely highlights the fact that the harmony of the earth and sea is something particularly special in creation. Which we kind of know intuitively with the fact that most of us are drawn to the shoreline.
The and “God saw that it was good” gets repeated in the third day over the plants that now fill the earth. It seems like the break into this way of God identifying things a good really has to do with the ability of creation to support life. Just light or space by itself could not support life but all of the sudden when the seas and earth are formed now creations is habitable.
Question
It would be interesting to use the goodness of habitability as a theme to look throughout the rest of scripture. I know that the Psalms use the image of the desert becoming a pool or images like that. I wonder if this is a more important theme than I have realized. What does this theme say about who God is?
The ordering of creation that arises by the fourth day seems to go like this:
- Light in its essential and basic form which seems to speak to all light
- Space as created between the waters that are separated
- Habitable land and sea
- Plant life
- Time and seasons as marked by the heavenly bodies
What this seems to suggest in our time obsessed world is that time is actually a decent way down the list of essential structures that God built into the world. Time and seasons are still created good here but they come way after even the primacy of plant life. Which makes sense in the fact that if something simple like habitable land is not available then it really doesn’t matter how you spend your time.
I know this is crazy but is this an actual creation and God based Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs? I mean God created all these things before He but humans into the mix
In focusing on the “God saw that it was good phrases” it is interesting that in day five after the starts, moon, sun, plants, sea and earth are all in place the sea creatures and air creatures are all created and then blessed. It is almost as if each day the life of the earth gets more and more intense until finally God does not just see that it is good but actually blesses the creatures he Creates.
Interestingly on day six all the earth creatures are made and God sees that it is good but does not bless them the same way as the sea and air creatures. I guess because we launch straight into humans being made. there is the build up again though everything around the earth was created and filled with life first and then the earth is filled with living creatures right before humans are made.
So I guess the hierarchy of things can kind of be read both ways. the things created later are more important and valuable as seen by the blessing of the sea and air creatures but also the things that are created earlier are more foundational for supporting the later created things. As in everything relied on light in some way and animals often rely on plants.
This seems to suggest two ways of evaluating each created things:
- The God ordained value of the thing as indicated by God’s proclamation of its goodness and in some cases additional blessing. In this way of ordering things the relative value of things goes something like this:
- Humans - God gives the blessing of dominion and says creation is very good with humans in it
- Earth creatures - sees that they are good but no blessing
- Air and sea creatures - sees that they are good and a basic blessing of fruitfulness
- Time and seasons - sees that the heavenly bodies are good
- Plant life - sees that they are good
- Habitable Land and Sea - sees that they are good
- Space created by the separation of waters - no mention of being good
- Elemental Light - no mention of being good either
- The core order of when something was created suggests its foundational importance for the support of the rest of creation. This order is reversed and would go like this:
- Elemental Light - core and first structuring of creation
- Space created by the separation of waters - next core structure
- Habitable Land and Sea - First fully functional part of creation as far as habituality goes
- Plant life - first organic life to inhabit creation
- Time and seasons - Almost makes time and seasons a differentiation of both the light and space created in the first two days. It is the way in which the core structures come to life in the sense they are dynamic? Definitely a lot more to think about there.
- Air and sea creatures - sees that they are good and a basic blessing of fruitfulness
- Earth creatures - sees that they are good but no blessing
- Humans - God gives the blessing of dominion and says creation is very good
Question
I wonder what the significance of the sun and moon getting created so late has when matched up with revelation and the assertion that the new creation won’t need a sun because Jesus will be all the light needed?
Reflection
Wow that was actually really crazy. I was not reading so that I could get the right answer or so that I could teach it or anything like that but just reading to see what is there and really chew on it. That seems to have brought forward a lot of the things I have been thinking about already but also just seeing things I had not noticed before.
Because the whole The Two Commissions way of seeing the creation story is one that I have come back to but today I was looking at very different parts of the story with the proclamations of goodness being a key part. I kind of started down this way of thinking in Abstract Basis of Life and Basic Hierarchy of Elements. But those rather abstract starts on this look dumb with the way today just kind of flowed out while I was reading this time when I wasn’t really trying to “get at” them.
Let’s keep going and see what happens!
Done
Ended today on Genesis Ch 1:31
12.9.24
The ordering of things is different in gen 2 that seems to denote a different relationship between things in creation. It is zoomed in on the creation of humanity. Plant life seems to be created but not growing yet because of two reasons:
- God had not caused it to rain
- there was no man to work the ground
We cut next to God watering the ground with a mist and then he forms the man. Then finally ends with planting the garden of Eden and placing the Man in it. This close connection between the garden and the man is super clear.
It seems like in this ordering the actual growth of plant life that takes the form of the garden is dependent and designed to be formed by human work. The whole idea that the wild is better without humans is not true. The wild without sinful humans is probably true but humans that are doing the generative work of taking care of the ground and plants is what the creation was originally intended for.
East is becoming more and more of an important image in my mind as I read and learn more. East is the direction of the rising sun. It is also the main orientation of the Ancient near east according to some of the dictionaries I have read. Which means it is the kind of equivalent to “true north” in modern usage. Therefore with east’s first use here the eastern garden is noted as a kind of foundational orientation of where the garden stood in creation.
Done
Ended on Gen 2:8
12.16.24
It strikes me that the process of naming and the women being created are connected in the story. I had never really put that together before. But literally the process of naming is what caused Adam to realize that all the wonderful animals were not equal partners with him. It almost feels like the first use of physical hands on learning for Adam that God did not just say “hey here is the woman that goes with you” but actually walks him through the process of realizing that he needs another human and specifically an other human woman to be with him in order to complete creation and who he is as a creature.
This is accentuated in verse 19 where the scene is pictured as God freshly making creatures and bringing them to Adam to name one by one literally like: “hey here is this flying thing what should we call it?!” It honestly is a really playful and joyful scene. I can image doing a similar thing with playdough with Eden and like going “hey look what I made! what should we call it!”
But then the excitement builds as it becomes clear they amazing and wonderful animals are not going to be up to the task of being a companion and equal with Adam.
You can almost hear his excitement in the poem that he write in naming her a woman. which is immediately followed by the core definition of marriage.
Done
Ended on Gen 2:25
12.17.24
Done
Quick read finished the third chapter
Second Time
12.19.24
I know doctrinally we have God creating Ex Nihilo with nothing existing and God creating everything. The uncreated waters are kinda freaking me out. Like is it that the creation account is really just zoomed in on the creation of the sky and earth so the fact that their are uncreated waters is kind of a clue to the creation of other parts of the universe (like heaven where God’s throne is) that are not pictured in the seven days?
The waters are clearly important in the fact that day two the separation of them is what makes the sky so I don’t think making it spiritualized somehow makes a lot of sense.
As I go back and read the definition of תֹּהוּ (Tohoo) I feel like the idea of absolute nothing is more at play than can be seen just from the english. Like the earth was nothingness is basically the force of that phrase which earth is the main player with that literally being what humans and animals are make of.
That is so interesting בֹּהוּ (bohoo) is only ever used with tohoo. I did not know that before and is only used in Isa 34:11, Jer 4:23 So this phrase תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ is really kind of a unit and a doubled expression of formlessness and nothingness. I feel like the doubling of the meaning is important as well as the fact that two different words that almost mean the same thing are used as well.
The word deep is also interesting and does seem to support the idea that this is indeed a section describing the absolute lack of anything because in Psa 71:20 תְּהוֹם (Tehom) is used to describe the abyss or caverns of the earth. So this deep dark abyss is something on the edge of being even able to be described by words at all because of it’s nothingness.
The last section of Gen 1:2 uses what I am coming to see as a classic physical description of an event or phenomena that you can see, hear and almost touch in your imagination. The spirit of God hovering like a hummingbird almost over the water. It is beautiful just thinking of that image by itself but then you put it in this context and its breath taking.
This also seems to be a bit of a progression three ways to describe the formless earth:
- Earth is tohoo va bohoo
- darkness is over the face of the deep abyss or nothingness
- Spririt of God is hovering over the uncreated waters. Each phrase takes you from not being able to picture anything to adding a little bit of a picture into literally describing nothingness. That is some pretty powerful poetry right there!
I think the idea of zoom for this first account is less helpful than just the fact that we are given the details that are meaningful for describing the good order and creation of God rather than all the random questions we might have or bring to this story.
Done
Ended on Gen 1:2 Lol not moving fast today
Third Time
12.31.24
Read through all in one sitting this time. Was outside facing east in the morning. Definitely a different emotional and physical atmosphere with that.
It strikes me that we can kind of think of technology in all its forms in regards to the curses of sin. Every piece of technology either helps to ward of sickness, the toil of work or even provide security from the danger of the sinful other. It makes sense how tech can so easily turn into an idol when it literally is trying to undo the effects of sin without ever really dealing with the root of it.
Done
Ended on at the end of Gen 3
Finishing Second Time
1.2.25
Started with Chapter three this time since I have spent a lot of time in the first two but not as much in the third.
It stands out to me that the curses in chapter three really lay out the major we tend to hear about human culture trying to “fix.” Gender inequality and oppression is identified in the end of 3:16. The beginning is often remember in connection with the actual birthing process but it seems like it also applies to all of the things around conceiving, and raising kids that is painful and hard.
Even the very source of sustenance from the ground is cursed and so food access and the joy of work are all tinged with the damage of sin.
Everything is put on track for a hard toilsome and painful life until death comes. God was not kidding when he said that sin brings death. It literally takes the whole creation and puts it on a slow horrible decent back toward nothingness. Reminds me of the Athanasies quote I have in here: The Struggle to be in God’s Word.
Done
Read all of Chapter three
Need to read From Chapter 1:3 through end of second chapter to finish second time.