6…ANSWERS BEGIN TO TAKE SHAPE

(Continuing our imaginative reading of GEN 1& 2…Read more there.)

 "In the beginning..there is Someone called God. Somewhere beyond that vastness out there. Beyond our understanding, too. God decides to create a world. Actually, God decides to create a whole universe of worlds out of all that darkness up there. (Now we know enough to understand that darkness up there a lot better than people did long ago. We know that 'up there, out there' is what we call Space. A really good name for such Vastness with its gases swirling all around, its 'black holes' & so on & so forth. Space is really anything but empty!) So, God sets to work. And because God is God, God only has to say, "Let there be.." & whatever God wants to happen happens. Light happens. Then day, night, sky, our earth itself with its oceans & seas & rivers. God tells them, calls them all into being. It takes a long, long while the way we tell time. Billions & billions of years. Though quick as a wink in God's time. (PS 90:4 puts it: A thousand years in your sight are like yesterday….’) Plants & trees of every kind begin to appear all over the earth. Everything we can think of. And a whole lot more. Scientists tell us that, go back far enough, they all originate in the great waters. Still YHWH keeps telling things to happen, & they do. Sun & moon, galaxies, more & more planets & stars. One of those planets is this earth we live on. The people who first tell & hear this story say God makes everything there is out of that Chaos God finds 'up there'. Out even beyond that darkness we see when we look up at the night sky. And so God does in a way. One of the first things God does is bring some order out of all that chaos. He does this by making things happen according to certain rules. Makes everything work according to Laws He sets in place by telling them into the unfolding Great Story, just as He tells everything into being. And people from of old pass this on in their imaginative stories. In God's good time He calls into being life of every kind. In the waters, the skies, on the earth. Some things we still have trouble imagining!

Last but not least, God creates us. Human beings. The story-tellers call the first ones they can think of 'Adam' & 'Eve'. Adam means 'made from earth, dust, clay'. His very name tells us he's a representative figure. He stands for the earliest human being our ancestors can imagine back to. Adam's wife they name 'Eve', meaning 'life', for the same reason. Eve represents the earliest woman ancestor they can imagine. Some people have even gone so far as to imagine God creates us because He is lonely, & needs someone a bit like Himself to talk to, relate to, play with. That's a nice idea, but it is only an imagining. Mind you, the fact that Christians have come to believe God is Three Persons in One, has three ‘personae’ as it were, represents God having a life of God's own within Godself. Whoever tells this early part of the story says God created us in His Own Image. We are so like God people should be able to see through us to God. See God in us! That's a big responsibility to live up to! Sometimes we don't live up to being created in God's own image, as we'll find out when we hear what happens next! So, perhaps this is a good place to stop, like those early story tellers say God stops here too. As they take a break from all they must do it makes sense to them that God needs a break too. From all that telling things & us into being. A break for God & us to enjoy each other! Our story-tellers tell us God creates everything in Six Days. Six of God's days, maybe, but we know now it took more years than we can either count or dream of. But then, what’s a day or a billion years, to God? Next time we'll hear about a garden, & what happens there. But that's another story.....