Here’s a brief blog series on each of the 12 days of Christmas, with Christian meanings.
Six geese a-laying
Six Creation Days
It’s in vogue today to see the creation week as poetry, not history. And utterly unscientific. How could there be light before there was a sun! Ridiculous. But only to the naturalistic mind that cannot accept a God with power greater than forces of nature.
The Bible actually tells us to rest one day every seven, because that’s what God did. Our 7-day week comes from Genesis 1, and we ought to follow it. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work…” (Deut. 5:13-14).
This isn’t to say there is NO poetry to the creation account. There certainly is. The first 3 days, God creates a three-story world on three canvases, or spaces: sky, sea, land. The next 3 days He fills each of them.
At the end, instead of saying “Let there be,” He says “Let Us make man in Our image.” Humans are uniquely God-like in the world, and called to rule the world faithfully in His stead (Gen. 1:28). This view has been under assault the last few decades with the environmentalist movement, which sees man more as a violator of nature, and just one part of it. Who’s to say a human life is worth more than a whale or a deer? God says it. Here. At the very beginning.
This is not a license to trash the planet. Just the opposite – we are to care for it. But the earth is a garden God gives for us to use wisely. We may not abuse it. But we may also not preserve it untouched. We need to cultivate it, as a garden. It’s a tool in the workshop, not mom’s best china that we may never touch.
It’s in vogue today to see the creation week as poetry, not history. And utterly unscientific. How could there be light before there was a sun! Ridiculous. But only to the naturalistic mind that cannot accept a God with power greater than forces of nature.
The Bible actually tells us to rest one day every seven, because that’s what God did. Our 7-day week comes from Genesis 1, and we ought to follow it. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work…” (Deut. 5:13-14).
This isn’t to say there is NO poetry to the creation account. There certainly is. The first 3 days, God creates a three-story world on three canvases, or spaces: sky, sea, land. The next 3 days He fills each of them.
At the end, instead of saying “Let there be,” He says “Let Us make man in Our image.” Humans are uniquely God-like in the world, and called to rule the world faithfully in His stead (Gen. 1:28). This view has been under assault the last few decades with the environmentalist movement, which sees man more as a violator of nature, and just one part of it. Who’s to say a human life is worth more than a whale or a deer? God says it. Here. At the very beginning.
This is not a license to trash the planet. Just the opposite – we are to care for it. But the earth is a garden God gives for us to use wisely. We may not abuse it. But we may also not preserve it untouched. We need to cultivate it, as a garden. It’s a tool in the workshop, not mom’s best china that we may never touch.
No comments:
Post a Comment