And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

– Genesis 1:3-4

So much ink has been spilled over the verses that now follow that it is easy for us to miss the point of them altogether. But for the moment I am trying to listen very closely to the story. I want to hear this, the story of God, above my own questions and assumptions about the world. Who is this God who imagines and wills universes into existence? The story now tells us that he is the one who speaks to the material elements and commands them to do as he desires. “And God said, ‘Let there be light.” He imagines and commands and one by one the elements of the world we know come into existence. The rest of the story of creation unfolds in exactly this way:

 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters…” v. 6

And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together…” v. 9

And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation…” v. 11

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night.” v. 14

And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures…” v. 20

And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures…” v. 24

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image…” v. 26

People have debated the exact length of each of these “days” of creation. Others have looked to them for help judging the merits of scientific theories about the mechanics of the early moments of the universe. These kind of agendas too easily miss the point. If God wanted to give us a textbook on quantum mechanics, who could have understood it? Instead the story tells us four critical things about the nature of God.

God Works:  For six days God works to bring the world as we know it into existence. He creates ex nihilo, or “from nothing” everything that is. He commands space and time into existence. He creates the solar system, the planets and the stars. He separates day and night and sets the entire mechanics of our vast universe into motion. Genesis leaves us no room to imagine God as the deists did – distant and disengaged. He is active and willfully interacts with the elements of our universe. Genesis also leaves us no room to imagine God as a personification of the elements as did many ancient religions. He is not the sun or the stars. No, he made these things from his own unique combination of imagination and will. He is separate from them and yet maintains a unique relationship with what he has made.

God Evaluates: God examines what he has made and evaluates the accomplishment against the divine imagination. God creates the phenomenon of light then evaluates the impact of his action. He declares it “good” and yet with his very next action he creates darkness and sets it into counterbalance with the light. This action shows God considering the impact of his every action. From our perspective if such a great power of imagination and will exists in the universe then we must know its character and its intent. What if God were capricious or devious? Then we created beings would be in deep trouble! But Genesis tells us that God’s actions are considered and deliberate. Step by step he adds to the creation until he achieves the effect that he first desired.

God Sets Limits:  God creates the light and then separates it from the darkness. God separates the sky and the seas. God separates the seas from the land. In almost every step of creation God establishes boundaries and limits for all the principal players. Darkness exists in balance to light and cannot threaten to dominate it. God commands plants, sea creatures and animals to populate and fill the earth but constrains them to the laws of genetics (vs. 12, 21, 25 “according to their kind”). Setting boundaries on the material forces of the universe is God’s domain. By creating and setting boundaries God both defines and protects the delicate ecosystem he is setting in motion.

These four characteristics draw a unique picture of God for us to consider. In the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish, two primary gods emerge in the unformed universe. The gods have children and as the pantheon of gods begins to grow a conflict develops. The story leads us to Marduk (the “sun-child”) who kills Tiamat (“the maker”). He cuts her body in half and put her “up to the roof of the sky.”

This kind of conflict between gods, so inherent to the perspective of the Ancient Near East is completely missing in Genesis. Instead God willfully fits each part of creation together the way that he wills it. In doing this, Genesis draws for us a picture of a very different reality and asks us to consider a very different God and a very different world. This God has no equals and in his world conflict isn’t the primary reality, but peace.