creation

Genesis' Two Creation Stories

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The Book of Genesis has two stories about the creation of the world. These stories are not meant to be science or history, but that doesn’t mean they don’t contain truth. They contain a lot of truth, really important truth that we need to remember: theological truths, moral truths, ontological truths, truth about who we are.

 Our first reading today comes from the second creation story. But before we talk about that, we need to talk about the first creation story because these two stories are in dialogue with each other. They are in conversation, and we can’t understand one if we don’t understand the other.

Seeking the Creator in Creation

For centuries, for millennia, people have been looking at nature, looking at the creation and being inspired by it. Many people have described the feeling that in seeing something of the creation they are seeing something of the creator. In seeing the creation and understanding how it works they are seeing how God works. The early scientists all understood themselves as doing holy work, of trying to understand the creator better by understanding the creation better. It’s an ancient concept. We go back to the book of Amos that has the beautiful line “seek the one who made the Pleiades and Orion.” The constellations are remarkable, the stars are remarkable and behind that creation is a creator who made them. We have been looking to the heavens, we have been looking to creation in order to see the creator. That is good, and that is holy work.