God's got the whole world....

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originally published October's Trinity Day School Newsletter
Trinity by the Sea Day School is off and running! In chapel we are beginning at the beginning, the Genesis. We are taking it a few days at a time, and imagining what it was like when God created the Universe. The Creation Story of the Bible is a poem that uses parallelism to reflect on the amazing existence of the world as we know it. We get a double 1,2,3: The first three days God sets boundaries: light is separated from darkness, water above is separated from water below, seas are separated from land. (And God sees that it is good!) The next three follow the set pattern: sun, moon, and starts (Lights); birds (sky) and fish (sea); then animals (finally on land) and finally, the best-for-last, humanity (male and female,) The Hebrew people who first told that story did not have access to the science we have access to today,
by which we understand the universe to be 14 billions years old. There’s no date listed in Genesis, but trying to put a date on our creation story that misses the point. Bishop Hibbs told a group of us at the SWT Canterbury, “If you are asking “HOW”, turn to science, if you are asking “WHY”, turn to religion.” The WHY of creation is found in Genesis, and it is about the intention of God and the goodness of the creation, It is about God loving so much that the whole Cosmos was prepared for us to have a place to be. God looked at the whole creation and pronounced: “It is VERY GOOD! Just like we spend time preparing our homes for our children to live, just like we separate time aside from other responsibilities to be with our children, and just like we provide the best we can for them, so, the Genesis story teaches us: God has prepared the world for us. What a gift.

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