All posts tagged Creation

  • August 22, 2018

    God’s Love In Granite

    Mills

    God’s Love In Granite
    Brian Zahnd

    The Bible opens with a creation narrative and the constant refrain is the goodness of it all. In the first chapter of Genesis God declares every day as good. The third day (the day life begins) is declared good twice. On the sixth day of creation we are told, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

    The ancient Hebrew account of the entire goodness of creation stands in stark contrast to the pagan creation stories where the world comes into existence amidst the chaos of a great struggle between good and evil. In the rival myths of the ancient world, evil plays a role in creation. The first great revelation of the Hebrew scriptures is that the universe flows entirely from the goodness of God; evil played no part in God’s good creation.
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    No Comments / Creation, Mountains, Theology, Water To Wine /

  • April 18, 2018

    Soil With A Soul

    Chagall

    Soil With A Soul
    Brian Zahnd

    “The LORD God formed the human (adam) from the dust of the ground (adamah) and breathed into his nostrils the breath (spirit) of life, and the human (adam) became a living soul.” –Genesis 2:7

    Soil is miracle ground — it’s the matrix of all life on earth. As the second account of creation in Genesis tell us, all life comes “out of the ground” — plants, animals, and humans. We did not fall as pure spirits from the realm of the perfect forms and find ourselves imprisoned in contemptible matter (as Platonism claims); rather we were formed from the dust of the earth, breathed on by God, and became living souls. We are humans from the humus, soil with a soul; we are a mysterious synthesis of the dust of the earth and the breath of God. There is a sense in which humans are very complicated, self-aware rocks — rocks so magnificently complex that we are capable of bearing the Creator’s image and sharing the Creator’s spirit. Indeed the psalmist is moved to praise God by saying,

    Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
    Your workmanship is marvelous — how well I know it.
    (Psalm 139:14 NLT)
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    No Comments / Christianity, Creation /

  • March 8, 2015

    Love Never Ends: A Meditation

    nebula

    Love Never Ends: A Meditation
    Brian Zahnd

    Why is there something instead of nothing?
    The only answer I can imagine is Genesis 1:1. In the beginning God…
    But why would God say, “Let there be light” and initiate Creation?
    The only answer I can imagine is God is love.

    What is light? God’s love in the form of photons.
    What is water? A liquid expression of God’s love.
    What is a mountain? God’s love in granite, so much older than human sorrow.
    What is a tree? God’s love growing up from the ground.
    What is a bull moose? God’s love sporting spectacular antlers.
    What is a whale? Fifty tons of God’s love swimming in the ocean.

    As we learn to see Creation as goodness flowing from God’s own love—
    We begin to see the sacredness of all things.
    As Dylan and Dostoevsky say, in every grain of sand.
    All of creation is a gift — a gift flowing from the self-giving love of God.

    Why is there light and oceans and trees and moose and whales and every grain of sand?
    Because God is love — love seeking expression in self-giving creativity.
    Unless we understand this we’ll misunderstand everything and misspend our lives.
    In our misunderstanding and misspent lives we harm Creation—
    Including our sisters and brothers, all of whom bear the image of God.
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    12 Comments / Christianity, love, Theology /

  • August 25, 2008

    From The Dust

    God formed man
    From the dust of the earth
    Breathed into him the breath of life
    Man became a human being.
    Genesis 2:7

    Humanity did not spring fully formed from the head of Zeus like Athena or fall from the sky like one of the gods of Greek mythology. Humanity did not have a pre-existent state in the non-spatial, non-temporal realm of perfect forms as Plato imagined. Humanity did not come from somewhere other than the earth. Humanity’s only home has been the spinning blue orb third from the sun. If this world is not our home (as the Gnostics claimed) we are homeless.

    Humanity was formed.
    Formed by God.
    Formed from the earth.
    All living things share common ancestry
    The dust of the earth.
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    No Comments / Humanity, Salvation /