Day 1: Genesis 1:1

Scripture: Check out these cool translations!

Observation: Most translations appear to separate Gen 1:1 as a single sentence. This is weird, for if we did insist on a full stop there, translated well, it would read "When it was the start, everything came from something." Duhh...

Rather it should be combined with verses 2 and 3, then it would read, “When the creation of Earth began, darkness covered the waters, and as the Source hovered above the waters it said, "Let there be Light!".”

Perhaps it is just this modern day's argument about whether there is a God that gets me irritated when I see the sentence separated. As if the opening phrase of the Bible were some declaration to atheists that God exists. (What a narrow, shallow, and small place to begin such an immense story!)

It really isn't. The name of God, “Elohim” of Gen 1 is applicable to all proposed sources of the universe - Krishna, Nirvana, Gaia, the infinite ocean of energy from which the Big Bang came from, whatever.

Rather the three sentences have to be read together because the opening lines invite us into questioning, "What is the nature of the Source? And therefore how has It formed our reality?" Can we depend on it? Does it like us? Is it aware of us?

Old mythologies (that must echo beside the Gen 1 text) have their proposals: The Egyptian Elohim: Nun - is a gray-inert ocean from which eventually the creative force will rise. The Greek and Mesopotamian Elohim: Oceanus and Tiamat respectively - depict their Elohims as watery, dark, chaotic, destructive, and monstrous.

But the ancient Jews disagree. Proverbs 3:19 says "By wisdom the LORD founded the earth; by understanding He created the heavens." The Ancient Jews of the Old Testament instead ascribe the nature of wisdom to the Elohim!

And then by John 1:1 we get "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."

John continues the tradition of his ancestors by using the word Logos (often simply translated as Word but in the Ancient Greek world meant logic and reason, often to do with convincing argument), giving further nuance to the idea of wisdom. And then tempering it all into the person of Jesus.

I read John 1:1-5 as: The Reason(Wisdom) of God (which He used to setup Creation), our source of Life, has come among us in person! And over (our) chaos and darkness it has called forth Light!

The parallels to Gen 1:1-3 are obvious. It's a marvelous twist of literature.

And then if we were to really strain forward with the thoughts the Apostles re-reading their Scriptures with Jesus revealed in them, the Wisdom of God is revealed to be Love! A tight knit relational concept (I like the word compassion - meaning to suffer together). Love is the foundation that our Universe is made of!

And then to strain even further, how are we to take that realization and to rework it once more with everything we understand about the Universe today. How is it that Love is the substance of the universe?

Isn't it string particles vibrating in 13 dimensions? But rather is not the perception of space and time a construct of our consciousness? That, we, human beings actually only perceive a thin slice of all that is, but even our peek into the infinite, lay out this vast, exciting, and often incomprehensible, vista of creation? And that our relationship (measure of love) with it, could dim the stars in the sky or flourish the deserts?  (This is bio-centrism, a wonderful and rather convincing new theorem.)

Does not our modern understanding reinforce the insight of the Genesis, and Proverbs, and John?

Application:

I don't get a lot of nature in my daily life. Most of the times my eyes are on a screen somewhere. Other than that I'm indoors where the source of light is fluorescent.

But sometimes at night, as I take my son out of the car, he'll excitedly point into the night sky and exclaim, "Moon! And stars!" Sometimes he's actually pointing at Jupiter or Venus. Once in a while it is actually an aeroplane landing somewhere. And yet, briefly, I’m caught in a moment of awe and presentness, some call worship.

I forget how important we are to the universe in my daily struggle to make ends meet and counter the demons in my head. Somewhere inside me there is a teenager or a little boy still crying out to be noticed or to be significant. Thinking that somehow, the Universe doesn’t really want him around and that he has to work his way into its approval. A crisis of existence.

And I forget that just by breathing, by seeing the stars, by listening to the wind, by feeling the ground beneath my feet, or by cuddling my family, it's all the Universe ever wanted of me. And that I am loved.

Prayer:

May the day come soon that our species remembers why we are here. That goodness is not whatever our society seems to think success is (as if there weren't enough suicides of popular people to remind us of this). And that while the struggle is real, we are already loved by the Creator and one day all things will be righted.