What Life Needs: Genesis 1:6-19
We are God’s people, His creation. He knows each of us better than we can know ourselves. It is amazing to think the same being that brought the entire universe into existence knows us intimately. He is an amazing God.
As the opening chapter of Genesis continues, God continues to sort creation. The heavenly beings need a place to dwell, as does creation. God separates the heavenly spaces from the earthly places and unsurprisingly, he calls the dwelling for the heavenly beings Heaven.
On the following day, God focuses on terrestrial creation. He sorts the land from the sea. Within creation there is a place to collect water and a place for terrestrial life to be placed. God prepares for the existence of life. For life to be successful, it needs a place to live, it needs water, and it needs some sort of food. God takes care of two of these three needs here. Life – both aquatic and terrestrial –have a place to call home and it has access to the water it needs to survive.
God is not a God who creates on a whim. God’s creation of life is planned and prepared. When God creates, He creates into a space where His creation can thrive.
On the next day, God creates vegetation. He creates plants to give up their seed, no doubt the grasses and cereals and such plants. God also creates the trees so that they might give up their fruit in due season as well. Here God takes care of the last requirement for life.
Now full of what life needs to survive, God continues to sort creation. The plants are sorted from the rest of creation and even sorted among themselves. There are seed bearing plants and there are fruit bearing trees. This is not very far from our sorting of vegetable and fruit.
On the next day, God sorts time. He makes the sun govern the day and the moon govern the night. God also creates stars in the sky to help show the distinction between night and day. In doing so, the stars become a signal for human beings to understand the passage of time. For almost the entire span of human civilization, people have read the constellations in the sky to know the seasons. This is another subtle indication of God’s preparation for life. Human beings need food, water, and shelter to survive, but to truly live we need to feel progress. Human beings need to understand development and progress and learning. We need time to try and understand our existence.
God demonstrates His wisdom with respect to creation. He sets the scene. He prepares. He knows what human beings need to survive and He knows what human beings need to thrive. He doesn’t only understand our physical needs but also our emotional and spiritual needs. He completes us. We are God’s people, His creation.
