And now, much as He did on the seventh day then, after He created life in us in Christ, He stands back in Sabbath. Not because He’s tired, but because He’s finished. When Jesus hung on the cross, His pronouncement was one that has great meaning for the followers of Jesus and the children of God. It is indeed finished. We don’t need to strive any more. We don’t need to improve on what God has done. The work He has done in us is His work, and it is very good. The call for us now is to Sabbath along with God, reflecting on and enjoying His finished work in creation. Creating us in Jesus.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” That’s how it all begins. And when I say “all” I mean all. This is the source of all things. It was an event that is absolutely unrepeatable. Unreproducable. Unobservable – because God was the only one there. Out of nothing, God made “everything.”

God created not out of boredom, because eternity was getting a little stale. Not out of loneliness, for God is completely and totally sufficient in and of Himself. God created out of love. It’s not unlike the reason why we have children. Some people have kids because they’re lonely or because they feel like there is a void in their lives. But often times, when kids come into the picture, it doesn’t necessarily fix that hole; it might put a band aid on it for a while, but it will come back. The best reason a husband and a wife have children is out of an overflow of love for one another. They love each other, and they want that love to spill over into others as well. So they have kids.

Before anything was created, there was an inexhaustible amount of love among the members of the Trinity. And that love spilled out into the creation of all that we see and know. So in the beginning God created. He created the molecules and the cellular division. He created the ecosystems that work in tandem with each other through His common grace. He knit together the vast number of individual species in all their glorious variety. He set the orbits of the planets in such a way that the tides on earth don’t rise more than they should. He planned night and day to be an appropriate amount of time to support different life systems in different areas. God not only created, but He created in such a way that all of His creation fits together in a harmonious way.

But let’s not stop there either. For in as much as God created the physical universe, He also created things that are invisible to us and yet are integral for the way we live. Take time, for instance. God thought that up, too, in the same way He thought up the Venus fly-trap or the brown trout. This too sprang from His creativity.

And so the process of creation went for six days. The heavenly bodies. The creatures and plantlife of the seas and the air. Then humanity, stamped and made uniquely with the imprint of the image of God. And then, quite suddenly it seems, creation is over. The end and conclusion comes at the end of day 6, as recorded as chapter 1 closes and moves into chapter 2, beginning in verse 31:

“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. But the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”

That’s how the account of creation ends. And at first glance, it doesn’t seem to end with a bang, but with a whimper.

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