Nothing which yields itself to His hands will ever be formless
- CHAOS TO ORDER; DARKNESS TO LIGHT
1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is a simple, introductory statement that is almost impossible to comprehend. The truth is that the concept of God must, for each individual, be reconciled within the bounds of the tangible laws of nature as we understand them. Scripture subtly asks, yet does not initially require, us to accept that there is an entity that exceeds the limitations of our senses and the earth around us. Scripture can be read as a history, indeed, and/or as a collection of stories packed with themes and metaphors which eventuate in the complete blueprint of a fulfilling life. Either way, it has so much to offer the individual reader, whether that individual perceives the earth as evidence of a higher power or not.
1:2 However, we will proceed as the former: believers as unable to deny the existence of God as we are to explain it. The proof that is proof aplenty in our heart is the Earth itself, which is introduced to us in this first chapter...as void. The earth has now been formed, and with too much attention to detail as to give credit to mere happenstance.
If we contrast the earth now with the earth as it was without form, we learn a lot about God. For the earth to be as it is now, its creator must be purposeful, powerful, skilled and compassionate. For a once-formless mass to become the biosphere that it is today, its creator must be not just intelligent but wise, patient, disciplined and principled. To undertake the project of life, and the protection and proliferation of life, our creator must have a well of love for His created.
1:3-5 A lot of intricate detail has been put into place to sustain us, but it all starts, and started with light. This is the first instance of the division between light and darkness. Light versus darkness is a continuous metaphor in scripture, a symbol of righteousness versus unrighteousness. It is in the light that truth is seen, and in darkness that deception is done. It is in the light that paths are found, and in the darkness that paths are lost. And just as the formless world had no light, so dark is the life which has not yielded itself to the authority of God.
Nothing which yields itself to His hands will ever be formless; the presence and power of God establishes order in you and your life just as thoroughly, as intricately, as He has done with the earth. God brings chaos into order, formlessness into functioning-form. God let there be light in the earth as the preliminary step to become the light in your life (1 John 1:5) and thus establish order in even the very minute spaces of creation.
1:6-10 The creation story is told as a seven-day event, but one day with God is as a thousand years... and a thousand years as one day (2 Peter 3:8). And even that statement is less a precise measurement than it is a way for us to understand that God's concept of time is infinitely longer than our own. Seven major events in the process of creation, represented by seven days, is representative of billions of years of creation. The discipline of Science does not contradict God, it endeavors to understand Him. The book of Genesis generously shortens the length of time and detail it took to create the earth, it is not an account of a literal seven days.
That said, after a long process of time, the earth developed not just light but water, but atmosphere, and land masses below it. It's possible that we are reading about a very-condensed "Pangaea," that one super-continent land mass that separated into the seven continents we have today (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America) as well as established our major oceans.
1:11-13 The earth formed as it was by the Hand of God, became a viable host for life: vegetation, grasses and plants. He created herbs that yielded seeds, and trees that yielded fruit. The third "day" creation, flora, should not be overlooked or undervalued. How significant that God created something, many things, that could proliferate life! He did not just create things, He created things that could continuously create. Tiny seeds, packed with God's wisdom became meadows and groves across the earth.
1:14-19 The sun, moon, and stars were created to help humanity discern between days and seasons and directions. Until the creation of the greater light and the lesser light, sun and moon, and stars, God was the light. We think of the earth as dependent on the sun, the moon and even the stars. And it is... now. For multitudes of reasons including temperature, gravity, and raw material, we are dependent on the sun, moon and stars, respectively. God has made it so. But we, our earth, and all light can also be harnessed to Him as the source of all that we need to be.
In fact, that harnessing is what the Bible is about and eventuates toward. The Bible leads us, step by step, to the ultimate "day" when we become, once again, harnessed to God. It explains why this process is necessary, and why we and the world exist as we do today, equal parts flesh and spirit, dependent on the sun and on God.
1:20-23 And then God created an even more complex form of life: fauna. They too could proliferate, multiply. The earth's oceans and bodies of water became full of sea-creatures. The skies became populated by birds. He saw that it was good, and God blessed them; He blesses the souls He creates because He loves the souls He creates, whether they have fins, wings, fur, limbs or anything else.
1:24-25 God then filled the land with the beasts of the earth, the "creeping" things. The earth became a dynamic host of a variety of life, beautiful in itself and in function as a biosphere for increasingly-complex organisms.
1:26-27 The earth was deemed fit by God to host the ultimate organism: the human. He decided to make the human in the image of Himself... but that does not necessarily mean that our outward appearance is emulation of God. It could solely mean that our spirit, our soul, was made in His image. It could mean that the inward consciousness within us that we cannot see or explain or describe or deny is the part of us that is like God.
For Exodus 33:20 explains that humans cannot comprehend (and concurrently retain their life) the appearance of God. In our form now, souls pinned to bodies of the earth, we have to perceive Him in a less-direct way. If He looks exactly like us, we would certainly be able to look at him.
Note that God added, "let us make man in our image, in our likeness...". Both "the word of God" and "wisdom" are proclaimed in scripture to have been with God in the beginning, (Proverbs 8, 22:30; John 1:1). They may have been the companions to which He alluded. Or He may have been referring to what we often think of as angels. Perhaps our image reflects beings that exist in a wider realm of His creation.
Either way, what is important to glean from this text is that we are, in nature, like God: We have a seemingly-endless steam of life and thought and emotion. We are thus able to connect with Him, and He with us more intricately than the creatures created before us.
1:28-30 For that reason, God granted us dominion over the other creatures. As male and female to proliferate like them, but more complex forms of life. As a choice, and more merely an innate inclination. And humankind was given the same command: to be fruitful and multiply, but with intention and dominion. And we have, we do, not always wisely or righteously, but the proliferation God set in the motion in the beginning is thriving even now, eons after He set it all into motion.
Another almost-slight, but actually-massive difference, is that God directed humanity to "replenish" the earth. The use of the word replenish suggests that the earth had been filled before. If the earth had been filled before, it had been inhabited before. There is actually more evidence of that, in this chapter and throughout scripture.
In the second verse of this chapter, the word "was" in its original text is actually the word: "became." We know that God creates things with form not without, so it makes further sense that the earth became void rather than started that way. Explaining why the earth became void and needed to be replenished is another purpose of the Bible. Although God is the ultimate force in the universe (and beyond) there is another force that opposes Him, weaker and declared failed already but it does exist. It is the continuation of the theme mentioned earlier: light versus darkness. Darkness gathered in the first earth-age to cause mutiny (Revelation 12, Ezekiel 28); God subdued it and its leader.
God then cleverly re-formed, and re-purposed the earth to serve as a base on which all souls would somewhat unwittingly-decide, through their lifelong behavior, whether they were members of the army of God or participants of the rebellion led by the serpent we will meet in the third chapter of Genesis.
Genesis presents the major arc of the Bible: the history and future of 'light' versus 'darkness' but within this chapter and the rest of the chapters of the Bible there is even much more to glean.
1:31 God created humankind and declared that it was very good. That means that despite the chaos that took place before and caused there to be a need to reform the earth, God still valued the souls He created enough to create an opportunity for each one to find its way back to Him.