The Light That Loved to Make

In the beginning, God made the heavens and the earth,
but at first the earth had no shape at all.
No ground, no sky, no up, no down.
Only deep, dark water,
and the Spirit of God hovering over it,
waiting, the way a breath waits
before a word.

Then God spoke.
"Let there be light."

And there was light,
pouring into every corner of the dark.

God looked at the light and saw that it was good.
He gave the light a name, Day,
and the dark a name, Night.
There was evening, and there was morning,
the first day.
There was more inside that first word
than anyone would know for a long time.

On the second day God stretched out the sky,
with water up above it and water down below,
and blue air in between.

On the third day God said,
"Let the water gather into one place,
and let dry land appear!"
The sea sloshed off to its place,
and up came the land, muddy and new.
"Let the land grow plants," God said,
and out came grass, and trees heavy with fruit,
and seeds tucked inside every one.
(Every watermelon seed
ever spat across a yard
goes back to that day.)

On the fourth day God hung the sun to rule the day
and the moon to rule the night.
The Bible tells the next part in five words:
he made the stars also.

On the fifth day God said,
"Let the waters be full of living things,
and let birds fly across the sky!"
Splash went the fish.
Flap went the wings.
Up rose the great sea creatures, blowing spray.
God blessed them all.
"Have babies," he said. "Fill the seas."

On the sixth day came the animals of the land:
cows and lions and rabbits,
the elephant with a nose that works like a hose,
and the beetle that rolls its dinner into a ball.

Then God said,
"Let us make people in our image,
to be like us."
So God made people,
a man and a woman.
God blessed them.
"Have children and fill the earth," he said.
"Be in charge of the fish and the birds
and every living thing.
I have given you every plant with seeds
and every tree with fruit to eat."

God looked at everything he had made,
and it was very good.

On the seventh day God finished his work,
and he rested.
(God was not tired. He never is.
He rested the way a painter puts down the brush
and stands back to look.)
He blessed the seventh day and made it holy.

But the first six days
all ended the same way.
There was evening.
(The seventh day is the only one the Bible never ends with evening.)
Every night the dark came back,
and soon a worse dark would come,
when the people God made turned away from him.

For thousands of years they lit their lamps
and waited for morning.
God's prophets promised
a great light for people walking in the dark.

Then, at a river,
the Spirit of God came down over the water again,
this time like a dove,
onto a man stepping out of it.
He was the Word, who was with God in the beginning and was God himself.
Everything had been made through him.
Later, Jesus told the crowds, "I am the light of the world,"
and the dark has never put him out.