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Pastor Rob Leveridge

Moving stuff around


In the creation story of Genesis 1, God spends as much time simply moving stuff around as he does calling things into existence. Read closely and it seems that making order out of chaos is as important as making something out of nothing.

Half of Day 1 is spent separating light from darkness.

The project for Day 2 is dividing “the waters above from the waters below”, by making a big dome we call the sky.

On Day 3, land is created, but not by conjuring it out of thin air - God decides to move the water around, and oh look, there’s land. The waters are further collected and organized into seas and lakes.

Day 4 is just God gathering and distributing the Light into the sun, moon and stars, for the purpose of organizing time into days, seasons and years.

On Days 5 and 6, God calls forth living creatures, and creation culminates on Day 7 with God’s organization of work and leisure - God rests, and decrees that there will forever be abundant time for work, punctuated regularly by time for not working.

Creation is certainly about God making stuff that didn’t exist before. But it’s also about God putting stuff in order.

We are conditioned to think of our productivity as our output. If we make something, especially if we make it from scratch, we can point to it, and say, “Look - that’s what I did.” It’s validating and gratifying.

But Genesis 1 also describes creativity, artistry, productivity in terms of arranging what’s present all around us. Shaping and arranging what is there, and watching beauty, miracles and life emerge as a result.

Ordering things in the right way, in the right place, at the right time.

If you are longing for a new thing - a new life experience, a new vocation, a new creative expression, a new way of being in the world - it is natural to believe that this new thing will happen because you call it forth out of nothing, by the sheer force of your brilliance and will.

But it’s just as likely that the newest creative miracles you experience will arise from arranging or rearranging the pieces that already make up your world.


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