Category: Song Writing

This is the fourth in a series of seven posts where I share my thoughts about my song Creation and the story in the first chapter of Genesis.

“On the fourth day God filled the sky with lights
The sun for day and the moon for nights
And He scattered stars in the evening sky
As signs to mark the seasons by
So the fourth day God filled the sky with lights
The sun for day and the moon for nights
And the third day God made the plants and trees
He made dry ground and He made the seas
And the second day God made the sky
The water split so the firmament’s dry
And 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”

We measure the length of a day by how long it takes the earth to rotate one full turn.  Because of this, many of us have decided that the “days” talked about in the creation story had to be 24 hours long.  Others will discount any credibility of the creation story because science tells us that it took a lot longer for many of these things to happen.  If the sun wasn’t created until the fourth day, how would we know how to measure the length of the first three days?  Even the length of the fourth day would be in question.  As a Christian, I don’t have a problem with the idea that these things took many years to happen.  As a scientist, I don’t have a problem with a supernatural act of creation taking 24 hours or even happening instantaneous.  If something supernatural happens, what does the evidence look like?

And is any of this important to the creation story.  I believe the whole idea of creation happening over the course of seven days is more important in establishing God’s participation in the event and establishing the Sabbath than giving a detailed scientific and historical explanation.  The creation of the heavenly bodies serves as a marker for the seasons and is therefore not necessary until there would be creatures on the planet that would benefit from these signs.  To the writers of this story, it is not necessary for God to create these things until they are needed by the creation.

This is the third in a series of seven posts where I share my thoughts about my song Creation and the story in the first chapter of Genesis.

“On the third day God took all the sea
And split it up where the ground would be
And He filled the ground with plants and trees
That reproduce by making seeds
So the third day God made the plants and trees
He made dry ground and He made the seas
And the second day God made the sky
The water split so the firmament’s dry
And 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”

At this point in the story, the earth is still covered with water.  It is gathered into one place so the plants start growing. My daughter asked me how the plants could survive without the sun.  I didn’t think about it at the time but the story tells us that we do have light.  God is the source of the light and the source of life for these plants. 

This is the point in the story where life begins to be present on the earth.  This seems to go well with the scientific evidence of how life began on earth.  Again this is not a scientific explanation of how things happened.  The original audience for this story would not have understood a scientific explanation.  What was important was that it tell that God had a part in the creation.  This is the reason I have the line in my song where I say:

“This story tells God had a plan
And an order before He even started on man”

This is the second in a series of seven posts where I share my thoughts about my song Creation and the story in the first chapter of Genesis.

“On the next day God took the water high
He split it up and He made it dry
It’s a great expanse that He called the sky
With water low and water high
So the second day God made the sky
The water split so the firmament’s dry
And 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”

The first time I performed this song for my family, my youngest daughter immediately asked “What is a firmament?”  I didn’t have a good way to explain it to her.  The easiest way to describe it is to say it’s “the sky”.  That doesn’t really give a full explanation of what the people who originally told this story meant when they referred to the firmament.  This term goes back to the days when scholars believed that the world was flat.  They also believed that the sun, moon and stars were embedded in a dome that went over the earth.  In this creation story, the heavenly bodies weren’t made until the fourth day.  According to this scripture, they also believed there was water above this dome.  From the understanding of the universe at that time, it makes perfect sense that a “firmament” would be the next thing to be made.  God has to do a lot with all of the water in this story to get the earth to the state that we are familiar with.  Creating a sky over the earth would be the perfect next step for getting all of the water away from the earth.

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”