Genesis Chapter 1

In the beginning, God.
In the beginning, God created.

God exists from before the beginning. The beginning involves God acting. God acts in the beginning. This particular story is man’s beginning. This particular story is our beginning.

I am amazed at how man is created. God decides that man is to be created. “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,” he says. It begs a few questions. First, who is “us”? To whom is God speaking? And is it not interesting that the creative impulse of God ascribes only one description to man, that of being in God’s likeness. What does it mean to be created in the likeness and image of God?

Before God creates man, he makes a purpose for man. This was not some haphazard creation. God did not make man, and then determine a purpose, rather, the attributes ascribed to man during man’s creation is first the likeness of God, and second is purpose.

We have purpose. Our purpose does not derive from our situation, heritage, or nationality. Our purpose was determined before we were born.

Then, nearly inexplicably, as if it scripture were aware at the profundity of the thought, scripture repeats itself for the first time. “So God created man in his own image, in his own image he created him; male and female he created them.” (The mention of female is added lest males believe that only they are in God’s image.)

Right after God creates them, before they do anything at all, before even God saw that His creation was good, God blessed them. He blessed them, and reiterated their purpose.

God blessed us. God’s blessing predates our desiring it. It precedes our seeking it. It precludes our earning it.