In the Beginning
In the beginning there was only God.
First God created light. He separated light from darkness. The light he called ‘Day’ and the darkness ‘Night’. And God saw that it was good.
Then God created water. He separated the waters above from the waters below. He called the waters above ‘Sky’. And God saw that it was good.
Thirdly God gathered the waters below together in one place so that land appeared. He called the land ‘Earth’ and the water ‘Sea’. He filled it with seeds and fruit and plants and things that grow. And God saw that it was good.
God made the sun to rule over the day, and the moon and stars to rule over the night.
He made the fish to fill the sea, and the birds to fill the air.
On the land God put all kinds of animals, so that they could live there.
Last of all, God made human beings. He made them male and female. He gave them authority over all his creation, to look after it wisely, and to rule it with wisdom and compassion. And God saw that it was very good.
(If you are still arguing over how long all this took, I’m sorry, you have missed the point! Look at the refrain and there you will find meaning.)
God placed the human beings in a garden, which had everything that they needed.
At the centre of the garden was a tree. The first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, could eat anything in the garden, except the fruit of that one tree. The fruit of that tree was the knowledge of good and evil. Against God’s wishes, against his explicit instructions, they ate of the fruit of that tree, and came to know ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’.
(The point about being God is that he could create anything. He chose to create only what was good. The tree represents the point where God’s creation stops. He, of course, knows evil. How can you know what is good unless you also know what is evil?)
Having eaten the fruit, Adam and Eve could now see goodness, but they could also see evil.
What you can imagine you can also create.
They knew that they were ‘naked’. They could not handle this disastrous knowledge, so, in terror, they hid.
Like a child playing with fire, they had to be protected from the harm they could unleash on themselves and all creation, so God took them out of the garden and set a guard on the tree so that they could harm themselves no more.
And God set about creating the antidote to the poisonous fruit that they had eaten.
Jesus is that antidote.