thought exercise on Creation

To make suggests making something out of something else the way a carpenter makes wooden boxes out of wood. To create suggests making something out of nothing the way an artist makes paintings or poem...

Names in the ancient world were associated with identity, role and function. Consequently, naming is a typical part of the creation narratives. The Egyptian Memphite Theology identifies the Creator as...

Every creator, from a child with Play-Doh to Michelangelo, learns that creation involves a kind of self-limiting. You produce something that did not exist before, yes, but only by ruling out other opt...

After finishing a major project, have you ever stood back, taken in what you have accomplished, and said to yourself, “That’s pretty good”? I’ll admit that I have on numerous occasions, especially aft...

The Jews were not the only religious people in the ancient world. There were others, such as the Akkadians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, and they had their own creation stories. When one compares the ...

John Walton argues in The Lost World of Genesis One that rather than concerning material creation, the creation account in Genesis one concerns functional creation, because that is how ancient reade...

The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than the alien intrusion of sin, as the villain. Such an error conceives of the good-evil dichotomy ...

In The Lost World of Genesis One , John Walton points out that the creation of light and the division of day and night is profoundly puzzling if we understand light in the modern way, as a material o...

The earth had been completely unformed and empty; in the six-day process of development God had formed it and filled it—but not completely. People must now carry on the work of development: by being f...

“Create” may be the English word for bringing something into existence, notes scholar John Walton, but that English word isn’t in the Hebrew Bible. Instead, the word is “bārāʾ.” So, if we are going t...

Scholar John Walton points out that when Genesis 1 calls the world before creation tōhû, it is a modern cultural misunderstanding and mistranslation to think that it is describing the world as “formle...

In The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien imagines the creation of the world as a divine chorale, with creation appearing out of nothingness like a glorious unfurling tapestry as God sings and the heavenl...

Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century mystic-theologian who maybe understood the belovedness of creation and new creation better than anyone. In the fifth chapter of her book Revelations of Divin...

In his classic work, Basic Christianity , John Stott shares this most fundamental truth about God: God always makes the first move. Whether it is the creation or our personal relationship, we are n...

Sometime in the last decade or so I started hearing the phrase “all that good stuff.” I think it happened first when I was ordering dinner at a restaurant. The waitress summarized the menu briefly, en...

We were in London watching the musical The Lion King. Surely you’ve seen the movie; the opening number is worth watching again this week to help your imagination seize the new earth with both hands. A...

Our lives are meant to inspire with (or inhale) the breath of God, the glory of his presence, the brilliance and beauty of his creation, and to expire (or exhale) an echo of wonder—an “amen.” It shoul...

The Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book The Home We Build Together , points out to the reader that in scripture the description of the creation of the universe in Genesis is given a mere thirty-fou...

There is an Indian restaurant in my neighborhood called Bollywood Theatre. I once went to lunch with my friend Todd Miles, a theologian at a local seminary. Taking in our first few bites, he blurted o...

In Understanding Genesis , Nahum Sarna argues that a critical distinction between Genesis and the stories of contemporary pagan societies is that Genesis is not myth . Myth is associated with ritual...

If God wanted to remain silent about His existence, He wouldn’t have bothered creating the stars; He wouldn’t have made the Milky Way, or Betelgeuse. In fact, He wouldn’t have made the majestic Rocky ...

The central vision of world history in the Bible is that all of creation is one, every creature in community with every other, living in harmony and security toward the joy and well-being of every oth...

In this short excerpt, the author and priest Robert Farrar Capon describes just how intricate and beautiful one single part of God’s creation is, the chicken egg: Forget for the moment the fantastic...

The South African politician Nic Diederichs—a prominent leader during the apartheid era—once made a rather provocative observation: God, he said, dislikes deadly uniformity. I hate to admit that I lik...

Years ago, my family and I visited Sequoia National Park in California. The highlight of this trip was seeing the Giant Sequoia redwoods, after which the park is named. These trees are awe-inspiring, ...

Once, when sharing my faith with an agnostic friend, I was asked to make my greatest argument for God’s existence. I uttered one word: mangoes. I was not talking about just any mangoes. I was talking ...

Medical doctor Paul Brand, who is best known for discovering the cause of leprosy and developing a treatment for it, reflects on the nature and design of the universe. The more I delve into natural l...

In A River Runs Through It, Norman MacLean’s Father, a Presbyterian Minister, is sitting on the bank of the river, reading the Gospel of John while his sons are fishing. When Norman comes over to wher...

Contrast the creation of the first man according to Genesis 2 with the creation of the first human beings according to Mesopotamian tradition. Both start with dust or clay, but then the accounts vary....

Have you ever been told that you’re like someone else, someone you admire and respect, someone you’d love to be like? I had that experience many times while growing up. My family and I were members of...