in the beginning ...

The first two chapters of Genesis comprise one of my favorite pieces of poetry. It's a story, it's history, and it's beautiful free-verse. It's not clear at first, but when you read the softly repeating lines such as "And God saw that it was good," and "There was evening and there was morning," showing the pattern of creation - not some wild collision - you sense that this telling is a kind of song.

"And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

"God divided the light from the darkness." When I read this, I imagine God as though he is composing the most perfect piece of music, the way that J.R.R. Tolkien describes creation in "The Silmarillion".

Of course Adam too is captivated by the new world, by Eden, and by the God who gave it all to him. How could he not be? So he too speaks poetically: "Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called women, for she was taken out of man."

I love to imagine Adam's eyes as he says this, filled with wonder and awe for God's splendid creation; someone like him, a help meet, someone who completes him.



I love C.S. Lewis's book "Perelandra", because it paints a "what if?" picture of a new world, like Eden, with male and female inhabitants who also have a choice to listen to the voice of a tempter and enter into sin, or to obey their Creator and resist temptation and live blameless in their perfect world. What if that had happened to Adam and Eve? What if they hadn't been so easily swayed? What if we all weren't so easily swayed?

God knew the outcome of His perfect creation. He knew of the war in heaven that would result in Satan roaming the earth, and even so He gave free will to both His angels and His people, His children. I love Genesis because it is a poem, a promise, and a love song from our Creator who calls us to be His bride and live once more in paradise with Him. Just the way He perfectly created it to be.