This is the first in a series of seven posts where I share my thoughts about my song Creation and the story in the first chapter of Genesis.
When I wrote the song Creation, I was doing mainly as a memory device. Before I wrote the song if you asked me what God created on what day according to the story in Genesis 1, I would not be able to tell you. I’m always looking for stories from the Bible as the foundation for my songs. This story seemed to be a natural. I immediately came up with the idea of repeating lines like in the songs The Green Grass Grew All Around and There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. I thought this would make the order easier to remember.
“On the first day God made the heavens and earth
And He made the light with His Holy word
Split the dark and light in an equal way
Called the darkness night and the light was day
So the first day God made the heavens and earth
Split the dark and light in the universe
And to mark the time there was morning and evening
And He saw that it was good”
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”. This is the start of a beautiful story. It’s a simple explanation of how the whole thing began. It’s not a scientific explanation. It’s not intended to give a lot of technical details. It can’t when it a sentence with only ten words. The scientist in me is left with many questions that this story cannot answer. That doesn’t mean that this story isn’t true. It’s like a one sentence description of a three hour movie. Sometimes that one sentence is all you need. I think it works for this story.
God also speaks light into creation. There is no sun yet, the light is just there. Where does it come from? In Revelation 21:23 where it describes a new Jerusalem, it says that “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.” God and the Lamb are the sources of light. The story doesn’t say that God created darkness but says that God separates the light from darkness. What does this tell us about the nature of darkness? This story establishes light as a symbol of goodness and dark as a symbol of evil. Beyond a simple explanation of creation, this symbolism is probably the strongest image we get from this story.