Once upon a time – the very first time actually, because it was the very beginning of time, at least in the way we know it – God – who is before and after, above and below, inside and outside everything, including time – began to create the earth and everything else. The earth was covered with emptiness. There was a huge empty wind blowing over a vast empty ocean, and the ocean covered almost everything. But if we had been there we wouldn’t have seen any of it because the darkest darkness you can imagine covered it all. As an old Sunday School teacher once said, “The whole thing wasn’t nothin’ but a mess of bad weather,” and he was right. It was all very big, HUMONGOUS actually, but none of it meant very much. No matter how big or small things are, they only mean something when they fit together with other things in a story, and there were very few things, and there was hardly any story... yet.
So God made light. I don’t know how he did it; nobody knows. Maybe it’s not the sort of thing you can know. He just sort of thought it up I guess, like he thought up all the other stuff: the earth, the water, the darkness. Perhaps it was sort of like when you and I think up stuff. Do you know how you think things? I sure don’t. It’s a mystery.
Anyway, after he made the light and everything could kind of see where it was, or actually that it wasn’t anywhere in particular, he began to make places and put things where they belong. He loved the light, so he made a place for it, kind of like “day”; he also loved the darkness, so he made a place for it too, sort of like “night”. –Sometimes people think that light is good and darkness is bad, but both are very good when they’re where they belong. Almost everything’s good when it’s where it belongs. – And God said to himself, “That’s a pretty good days work for a first day.”
The next day God sorted out the water. He made the sky and put some of it there. And then he made the rest into oceans, rivers, lakes, streams and ponds. Wherever there wasn’t water there was dry land, and that was good because God had plans for all of it. As we will see, he had plans for the sky, the water and the land.
God made plants for the land: trees, bushes, grass, vines, moss and mushroom type things, and certainly some kinds that I don’t know the names for. He made them with flowers and fruit and seeds so that they could reproduce and spread everywhere. And all of the plants were very good, and none of them were weeds, because a weed is just a good plant that’s growing where you don’t want it to grow. In the beginning God put everything where he wanted it, so everything was were it belonged.
God filled the sky with the sun to shine and make daytime on the earth, and the moon and stars to shine in the night. He made birds for the air, and fish for the oceans, rivers, lakes, streams and ponds. He made animals and insects and set them free to wander all over the dry land and to live wherever they wanted to live. And he looked at it all, and he thought to himself, this is pretty good.
Now, there are couple of things I need to mention, in case you haven’t noticed. The first is that I’m talking about God as though he’s a person like you and me, and even as though he’s a “he”. That’s pretty silly and childish, of course, but it’s the best I can do because we’re all silly children when it comes to talking about things that are too big and mysterious for us. When we say that God “makes”, or “does”, or “thinks” or “loves”, we must always remember that we are talking baby-talk. Some of what we mean when we use these words may apply to God in some way, but I suspect that some of what we mean is just confused and foolish. And even if part of what we mean is right and good, it can never be big enough to fit God. When you or I talk about God we are like little children on their first trip to the beach talking about the Pacific Ocean. It’s salty, wet, big, beautiful, scary. All these things are true I suppose, but just barely. We speak of things too wonderful for us.
And secondly, this whole “experiment” (which is almost certainly the wrong word) seems pretty chancy. With all these things happening together, what might go wrong? To be honest, sometimes I’ve looked around and wondered if it might have been better if God hadn’t made anything at all, or at least if he hadn’t made people. But, as I’ve said, I’m just a child, so what do I know?
Next... the chanciest thing of all
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