Many have found it helpful, if they have had any experience with painting or photography, to think of God as the Great Artist in understanding the creation of the earth. Consider God painting on a mural of grand scale the earth and its surrounding skies. He begins with a blank canvas. Notice that God creates the earth in a raw state of darkness, formlessness, and emptiness. We don’t know how long the earth stayed in this state of initial development. Maybe this initial creation took thousands or millions of years? Maybe it only took a snap of God’s fingers? We are not told how long it took. This was before there was a reckoning of time by days or nights. God had not created them yet. Nor do these first verses tell us how God created this strange, new world. Maybe there were cataclysmic events such as continental plates colliding and volcanoes erupting? That type of conjecture occupies the minds of scientists seeking clues to formative events in our present world. But it is important to realize that God created this three-dimensional mural so that He could form and fill it with light and life in amazing wonder to all.
Upon this mural God shines light. His brush is His voice. He merely speaks and the light shines forth from His infinite imagination. This light shines everywhere in a general sense, as there is not yet a specific source discernible for this light. This diffuse light shines during a portion of time and not during another portion, beginning the cycle of day and night.
After God introduced light in His creation, He begins creating at the horizon, where so many artists begin painting. God separates the waters of the sky from the waters of the earth. This boundary defines the mist and clouds of the heavens from the rolling oceans and bodies of water below. God turns His gaze upon the earth to continue defining its features. Land appears separating the bodies of water. Browns mix with shades of blue. Then the color green appears as the earth fills with vegetation. A pattern of general to more specific occurs with the vegetation. The green becomes a profusion of color as seed plants sprout an array of flowers. Fruit trees claim hillsides and river-bottoms. The many colors mix and match to present a diversity of plant vitality. What began as a formless, colorless void now throbs with life in the colors of the spectrum of light surrounding all creation.
God continues creating this marvelous mural. He returns to the areas of broad brushstrokes and brings out intricate detail. The general light takes on specific forms. In the daylight He speaks forth the bursting light of the sun. He dabs the night sky with lesser lights of stars and moon. In the air the flowers of the sky take wing. Feathered creatures of yellow, red, blue, green, black, white, or brown soar, dive and mate. The cliffs are theirs, as are the treetops. The sea life springs forth in response to the sound of God’s voice. Finned creatures breathe through gills. Monsters of the deep rise up to feed on the micro-plankton of the surface waters. The incredible variety that flows from the mind of God overwhelms the waters with vitality. God is not done. The land needs creatures to breed, multiply and fill the earth. Kind after kind, species after species of animal walks, runs, creeps, bounces, climbs and leaps upon the earth. Some animals God creates wild to run at will. Some He creates with mild tempers to be domesticated for other use by the greatest, most intricate creature yet to come from the dreams of God.
The sky, background, middle-ground, and foreground of our mural have been filled in with the breadth of God’s creative vision. Before we move on to the focal point of God’s creation, let us consider the pattern in which God proceeded to this point. From chaos comes harmony and order. After formlessness God separates and gathers according to greater variety. Where the emptiness reigned, God fills with swarming, swirling masses of life all in order of kind. Out of darkness God lights and colors the world. As God brought harmony from chaos then, so today and forever He continues to bring order and beauty to life. He does this with our world, our nations and our lives.
Below is a chart that outlines this work of harmony from chaos. Note the balance of days and the work that occurs from the general to the specific in each area. Those who appreciate the wonder of nature declare with God that all of this is good.
God’s Grand Mural: The Universe & The Earth
The Symmetry of God’s creation:
First Day & Fourth Day:
Light separated from darkness & then lights for night and day appear.
Day and night created & then sun, moon and stars created.
Second Day & Fifth Day:
Waters of heaven separated from waters of the earth & animals for the water created.
Sky created & then animals for the sky created.
Third Day & Sixth Day:
Dry ground separated from water & then animals for the ground created.
Land and seas separated with vegetation on the land & then the appearance of all types of animals on the land.
Humans created on the land.
Our eye has been drawn by the balance and rich color into the heart of this mural we call the earth. Here we notice the focal point of the mural. God creates humans by the most delicate of brush strokes.
26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” 29 God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Genesis 2:1-3 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. 2 And on the seventh day God finished the work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that He had done in creation. (NRSV)
Until now God merely spoke and His words brought to life the images of His mind. In verse 26 God holds a conversation, but with whom? Who else was there? Was God speaking with Himself? In short, yes. The conversation began “Let us make humankind in Our image, according to Our likeness.” Note that the pronouns are plural? The pronouns ‘us’ and ‘our’ in the Hebrew language are of a type of plural different from our English plural. English plurals indicate two or more. This Hebrew plural indicates three or more are involved. Here three are involved. God the Father is present guiding the process by His design. Jesus is also present in creation. Consider Colossians 1:16, “For by Him (Christ) all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him.” Through Christ God created the earth (see also the Gospel of John 1:1-3.) Look again at Genesis 1:2 to discover the Spirit of God is also present. Some Bibles such as the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translate the Hebrew word “ruach” into wind. But the word also translates as spirit. This is not just a wind blowing over the waters of a new creation. The Spirit of God descends upon this momentous occasion. The New International Version (NIV) translates