Genesis 1:1-26 Thoughts

I'm struck by this explosion of celebration - God in all his brilliance creating everything. If we manage to reach the end of the chapter without breaking out into spontaneous praise it would surely be a reflection of our failure to capture the author's heart. The start of this book projects into a place of wonder at God. We are left standing in the presence of the architect and source of everything we know. You can almost see the writer's hand scribbling furiously to try and keep pace with the overflow of his heart as it gushes out this mantra of awe...."and God said, and God said, and God said".

Genesis begins in the only place it possibly could with its eyes fixed intently on the centre of all life...God. As I see this focus on God, I am reminded of how often our society is looking, not up, but in. We so easily wander from this place of centredness and so quickly find ourselves looking to/at something other than God. It strikes me as exceptionally important that we realise this book starts with God. It doesn't start with man.

A question I feel will be very important to me as I start this journey is "what does this passage tell me about God?". As I meditate on this passage the positive vibe is overwhelming - "He saw it was good...He saw it was good...He saw it was good". The passage impresses on me that this God from whom all things came was the source of everything good. My first introduction to God is one that reassures me of his character - he is the author of good things and can therefore be trusted implicitly.

Something that repeats itself in this passage is God's method of accomplishing his purposes. The repetition of 'and God said' cannot be without significance. We are introduced to God's limitless power and the channel for it in this passage is His word. How careless I become, allowing His word to be an intellectual concept or a morning activity - in it is the power of life and I must seek to lay hold of it and allow it to work its creative power in me.

I guess it is easy to take for granted that the creation I am hearing of here is a very different world to the one I find myself in today. The paper's are given nothing to write about at this stage of the story, I am yet to hear of any bad news. It seems significant to me that in a chapter where the sun is shining and everything is good, God sits right at the centre of it all. It would be extraordinary to have any of our media carrying such a positive story today and is it really so surprising when God has seemingly disappeared from our story.

v26 smacks me in the face - I am suddenly introduced to a conversation and yet the only 'person' I have been introduced to so far is God. "Let us makes humankind in our image". I may need to dig a little into the language here but us/our throws me into the strange paradox of God (singular) speaking about Him/Herself as plural.

I don't want to venture any further for now but I must say that I feel if this passage of scripture doesn't lead us into praise and adoration of God we are surely just intellectualising the bible - we begin with something that should end in something more than a theological or scientific debate. These words surely must lead into His presence and reminds us of our dependence on him.