Sunday: God ~ A Glimpse of Creation
This world and all life on it, our own life and all we do with it—our existence begins with God, “for in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28, NKJV).
Here’s where the Bible’s story begins: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1, NKJV). And the fact that He spoke it into existence points to a power and a process that we can’t even begin to imagine.
And yet, God didn’t create from a distance; He was intimately involved, especially when it came to creating the first human being (see Gen. 2:7).
Read the story of the creation of the first human beings in Genesis 1:26-31. What important things does this account tell us about God? What important things does it tell us about people?
Image © Lars Justinen Goodsalt.com
It has often been said that we can learn a lot about God from spending time in nature, from looking at His creation, and seeing in it glimpses of the character of the Creator Himself. But we can also see glimpses of how God created the world to be from examining our understanding of God Himself. For example, if God is a God of order, we should expect to find order in His creation. Or if we believe that God is a God of creativity, we should not be surprised to find incredible examples of that creativity in the world He made.
Similarly, we believe that God is a God of relationships, and so, we find relationships as a core element in how God put the world together. He created each element of the world in relation to the rest of Creation. He created animals in relational harmony. He created human beings in relationship with Himself, with each other, and with the rest of creation.
While our understanding of God is limited in many ways, what we can see of His character should prompt us to reconsider how the world should be.
| How helpful is it to your understanding of the world to see it as a reflection of the character of God, even with the ravages of sin so readily apparent? |
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In a recent mentioned my work assisting in preparing hemin compounds from horse's blood. The hemins, of course, are the active part of the hemoglobin molecule that is responsible for carrying oxygen from our lungs to our muscles and returning carbon dioxide to our lungs. This is accomplished using an atom of iron that is bonded in place in the middle of the porphyrin ring. One of the things that we could do with our chemistry was to replace the iron atom with a magnesium atom, which produced one of the chlorophyll compounds (It is bright green). Chlorophyll is one of the key molecules in plant chemistry and takes an active part in converting carbon dioxide into oxygen in the photosynthesis process.
The interesting thing that I learned is that this porphyrin ring is used twice over; in the hemin in animal biochemistry and as chlorophyll in plant chemistry. This economy of design is something we value highly and I came to appreciate when I studied software engineering much later in life.
Now I am not going to make the great leap and draw the conclusion, "Therefore God exists!" There is much more to arguing God's existence than a couple of molecules with the same design. But, as a Bible-believing Christian, I see the evidence of clever design principles being put into practice. God not only made us using clever design, but he also made us to learn and discover and most importantly of all to relate to one another and to Him. That is more than chemistry! (but it is still interesting to learn how the engineering works too.)
God who hears.
Genesis 2: 10
10 The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.
God hears the innocent blood spilled in his faithfulness
Genesis 21: 17 & 18
17 God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid;God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. 18 Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.”
God heard the cry of a gentile woman in her distress.
If I enlist those of us post here, how often God heard your call, we might run out of space.
Amen Dr.Maurice for that insightful thoughts...
“Whatever is good in this life is designed by God as a foretaste of what it’s like to enjoy him.”
What a God of Love, grace and mercy. Only the first two chapters of the Bible that is not dented with sin out of the thousands of chapters in the Bible. Then the last two chapters as well which talks about the New Jerusalem.
All I can see about God and the fallen human race in/out of the Bible is a loving and merciful God.
The harmony with which nature operates unless disturbed (by man mainly), speaks a lot about our creator and how He intended this earth to operate. In essence, everything depends on each other and manifests a great deal of planning only possible by a divine power. Looking at how individual elements in nature are also organised is awe-inspiring. The enzymes are specific, hormones just play their roles in the right organs and at the right time, pathways and cycles complement one another, the tinier elements of matter just fit in when and where they are needed. What about the specificity with which cells operate, and what about the resilience of tissues, organs and systems even when put under extreme pressure. Such, to me, points to the creator and gives me hope that such a creator who can organize life in the way its organised, cares so much for me and others to leave us alone living a dis-organised life.
I marvel at the creation work of God. When I consider it in totally then am convinced that God is Alpha and Omega.
Imagine the movement of man on two legs, the crawling of the serpent,the fluidity of the snail,the jumping of some of the insects and the gliding of birds of the air ... Surely let God be God.
Living in the "true north, strong and free" has a special advantage. It's called spring.
For about seven months of the year everything seems rather dead, the leaves have fallen, the flowers have died, the grass is brown or is covered by snow. The world has turned into a black/grey/white place. And winter with it's icy winds seems to last forever.
Then comes spring -- like a new creation! Suddenly, the mountains of snow disappear, and life bursts forth. How beautiful the green colors, all the shades of green! The budding leaves on the trees, the colorful flowers -- the blue, blue sky.
It always brings to mind the "new creation".
Yes, this world tends to be a dark place -- but each spring we are reminded that there is a God Who can bring life and beauty and a "new creation!"
Hi My Brothers and Sisters,
I'm teaching Sabbath School again tomorrow; here's my answer to Sunday's question. Let me know what you think about my answer here (this American holiday always make me late in doing what I need to do). Thanks, and Be blessed:
Before the Sabbath School author asked this question is said this statement: “God didn’t create from a distance; He was intimately involved, especially when it came to creating the first human being (see Gen. 2:7). Genesis 2:7 says: ‘And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.’” You can’t get any more intimate then that. We, humans, are the only creature that God “breathed into his nostrils” in order to bring us to life. He could have created and given us life in the same way that he did with the fish of the waters and the birds of the air (Gen 1:22), or the cattle and the creeping things and breasts of the earth (Gen 1:24, 25). But He did not breath into any of the other creatures' nostrils to bring them to life; He wanted to let us know that we, human beings, are more special to Him than all of the other creatures of this world.
God did three things in creating Man that He didn’t do with any of the creatures of this world:
1) He created Man in His own Image. No one has seen God in His divine state, but we know from this verse, Gen 1:26, that if He created us in His Image, then He looks like us. That’s way Jesus said when Phillip asked Him –“ Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.”(John 14:8), Jesus answered, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”(John 14:9).
2) He give us dominion over everything that He created on this Earth, “let them have dominion over…". (Gen 1:27). What is dominion? There’s several definitions listed by Merriam-Webster dictionary, but I liked to use only two of them that seems to be appropriate for our study today. Dominion is the root word for Domain, as in territory, power, colony; or Dominion can mean “Absolute ownership”. Isn’t that amazing that God created this world, then gave the Domain or Absolute Ownership over to Man. Man had the Power to do with the Earth anything that he pleased, with only one exception. From the beginning of Creation, God gave the Man only one rule, and he would remain the “absolute owner” of the Earth forever. We will study about how Man lost this dominion later in this lesson.
3) As we will see in Genesis chapter 3, we are the only one of God's Earthly creation that God walked and talked with. There is no evidence in the Bible that God spoke to any of the animals (although there is an account of an Angel speaking to a donkey). Anyone else has any other comments about Gen 1:26-31?
Be Blessed!