Tempting as it is to let the rereading of the first words of Genesis 1:1-19 wash over me like an oft-repeated fairy tale, I know that these words that begin Holy Scripture are meant for me today just as they have been meant for all humanity for all of history.
Today I read these words and sit knowing that the story of creation of God’s mighty hand separating the waters, creating light from darkness, creating time itself, frees me.
It frees me from the elaborate falsehood I hold that the world is in my control; that everything depends upon me. My productivity, my abilities, even my thought processes and anxieties keep the world turning! Maybe not the entire world, but my family’s world—my world of everything and everyone I care about.
This error in this belief that I control my world is directly contradicted by the way God’s Word describes creation. God alone creates out of nothing. God alone can move and manipulate the powers of nature. God still controls nature, time, life, and death. Even though I can control some things in life, these things remain solely in God’s hands.
God wants to create, to heal us, to live with us. This is so freeing to me because I want to cling to control, to believe that it all depends on me, to think that only I can change things.
God’s power and love expressed in the first telling of creation is present in our lives today. God holds our lives in His hands today. But we will not know His power if we remain bound to our own attempts at power and control, if we don't believe that He can heal through only the touch of His cloak.
God wants to create, to heal us, to live with us. // Christy Isinger Click to tweet