(How Wonderful God Is as Creator)
(How Wonderful God Is as Creator)
I would like to speak to you today about God as Creator, reflecting together on the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, which explained the six days of creation. In this, you will see the attributes of God as Creator: in His wisdom, His intellect, His love of beauty, and order and coordination.
The six days of creation left an impression on the souls of the Fathers, to the extent that they composed books about them called (Hexaemeron), meaning the six days, such as the Hexaemeron of Basil, the Hexaemeron of John Chrysostom, and the Hexaemeron of Epiphanius… etc.
These days were the subject of many reflections on the wondrous process of creation that the Lord carried out in a way astonishing to minds…
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
That is, at the beginning of the process of creation, when God, in His goodness, began to grant existence to non-existence by the grace of being, when He willed to create, and so He created.
In eternity, God alone existed, self-sufficient, needing nothing beside Him… before the measures of time existed, indeed before time itself existed, before all that, God alone was.
He had not yet created anything. Yet the attribute of creation did not arise newly in Him. For all creations were before Him and in His mind, with their form, course, and destiny, from eternity, before He created them…
Then God began to create… when? In the beginning… in the beginning that He chose, at the time determined by His wisdom. In it He created the heavens and the earth… He created the high and the low, He created spirits and matter, He created matter from which everything was made.
His love did not will that He should create the heavens and spirits only, and that would suffice…
But out of His humility, and out of His love, He also created matter, He created the earth.
He created the small insect and creeping things, just as He created angels and archangels… He created the small as He created the great… all found a place in His care, His providence, His love, and His concern.
It was possible for God to create the whole world in a single moment, but He created it in six days to teach us deliberation and calmness…
We are a people who love haste in everything, but our gentle God loves calmness, loves natural progression instead of sudden leaps… and in the creation of the universe we see this calmness, increased by another factor, which is:
The six days were not solar days like our days now:
Our present day is measured from sunrise to sunrise again, or from sunset to the next sunset. But the sun—according to what is stated in the Book of Genesis—was not created until the fourth day. Therefore, the first four days were not solar days. Also, the seventh day was mentioned as having begun, but it was not mentioned that it ended, and we are still living in this seventh day until now…
Therefore, theologians agreed—regarding creation—on the following truth:
The day of creation is a period of time whose extent is unknown—it may be a moment of time, or it may be millions of years—whose beginning and end were expressed by the phrase: “and there was evening and there was morning.”
In these six periods of time, God created everything… For example, He said “Let there be light,” and there was light. Did that happen in a moment, or over long geological ages? This is something the Scripture did not mention. However, Scripture mentioned another truth, which is that the earth—at the beginning of its creation—was not as you see it now, but rather:
“The earth was without form and void,” and it was covered with water “and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” God did not leave it like that, but… “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters”… and the divine work began…
God delivered the earth from darkness by bringing forth light. He delivered it from the water that covered it by separating the dry land from the water. He delivered it from ruin by bringing forth life in it, and bringing forth habitation.
Thus, the story of salvation began before the creation of man, and it was a symbol…
It began with inanimate nature, before His work with living rational nature. And we saw the saving work of God in what we see of the creative work of God. Both were from the generosity of God and His love: just as He granted existence to non-existence, He granted beauty and habitation to ruin… how wonderful is the work of His grace!!
“Darkness was upon the face of the deep.” So what did the Lord do?
He did not say, “Let there be no darkness,” but rather He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light… and the Lord gave us a lesson in positive, constructive work…
God did not destroy anything, even the darkness: He left it, gave it a name, and allowed it to have authority: “this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” And until when will darkness remain? Scripture says that the wicked will remain forever “in outer darkness,” outside the light, the light in which the saints live, the light that illumines the heavenly Jerusalem, because “God is light.”
In wondrous positivity, God created the light and separated between the light and the darkness… and He will also separate between them on the last day and in eternity.
He will separate between the sheep and the goats, between the wheat and the tares, between those on the right and those on the left, between the inhabitants of the heavenly Jerusalem and the inhabitants of outer darkness, between the wise virgins and the foolish.
But now, despite the separation between these and those in nature and behavior, and despite that the children of God are evident and the children of the devil are evident, the mixture still exists. Wolves may wear sheep’s clothing, Satan may appear as an angel of light, and the good fish may be mixed with the bad fish… and matters will remain like this until the harvester holds his winnowing fan in his hand and separates the wheat from the chaff, the light from the darkness…
And just as we see positive work in the story of creation, we see something else:
We see that God prepared everything before He created.
Before He created man, He prepared all nature for him: “You established the heaven as a سقف for me, and prepared the earth for me to walk upon… for my sake You restrained the sea, You subdued the nature of animals…” Everything was prepared by God for us before He created us, so that we would lack nothing of His honorable works… and this is the wisdom in that God created man on the sixth day, after He had first created all means of comfort for him.
Is there not in this wisdom, order, and also love and care?
And this wondrous care was not withheld from the rest of His creatures either:
Before God created animals, He first created the plants they eat. And before He created plants, He created beforehand the suitable earth, the water that irrigates them, and the heat they require. Everything the Lord prepared with wisdom and order. All His works He made with wisdom…
And just as God prepared everything on earth, so He prepares for us in heaven: “I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come…”
He prepares the place first, and when He prepares it for us, He says, “I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.”
Blessed is the Lord who prepares everything before it happens:
Even before His birth, He had prepared the Virgin who, by her humility, would bear the glories of the divine incarnation from her. He had prepared John the Baptist who would prepare the way before Him, then stand rejoicing to present the bride to the Bridegroom… He had prepared all the prophecies and symbols that point to Him, so that everything might be fulfilled as it is written… and finally the Lord came “in the fullness of time,” after He had prepared everything…
The same method He followed in the story of creation, so that we may learn preparation as well. And we also learn from the story of creation the wondrous, astonishing order…
Many books can be written about this order in creation, indeed about the order present in anything within it.
How wonderful is the order in the cosmos, for example!
A long time ago I read a beautiful book called “With God in the Sky” (by Professor Dr. Ahmed Zaki), who was the director of the university at that time. In it, he described in a poetic style the movement of the stars in the sky, how they rotate around themselves, and at the same time move in that same motion around planets and suns… as if they are in a joyful dance, in a wondrous musical harmony… and the matter is not only the movement of these planets, but also their relationship with one another, with amazing laws that do not fail or falter. They are suspended in this space with the same divine order, giving us the succession of the four seasons, the succession of day and night, the phases of the moon, and the effect of all that on temperature, pressure, winds, and on the life of humans and animals… with precision, harmony, and a fixed order narrated by the story of time over thousands of years…
Consider the human body which God created as a wondrous sign of order:
Its tongue and larynx, each of them a precise musical instrument with strings, sensitive to tones, in which tone is connected to feelings and sensations in a way that no musical instrument can achieve, no matter how skillful the player is.
And consider all the marvelous systems of the human body in their precise functions: the heart, the brain, the nervous system, the digestive system… etc., and how each works with extreme precision and in full cooperation with the rest of the systems… is there not behind all this an all-powerful Creator who loves order to the utmost degree…
Indeed, consider the fingerprint of a human, and how it differs from every other fingerprint.
Despite the billions who live on earth, and are repeated through death and birth, each has a unique fingerprint. Is this not a miracle that the mind cannot comprehend?
And consider even an insect like the bee, and the order of its life and work:
How does it organize its ranks, leaders, and workers? How does it transform nectar into honey? How does it prepare royal jelly? How does it build its cells with skill and precision, and how does it clean them? … Is not the existence of this bee evidence of the greatness of God in His creation and His love of order.
An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Year Eight (Issue Forty-Eight), 2-12-1977.
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