Day Three
Loved.
There was a silence when we began.
The quiet rise and fall of lungs filling with air, the whispered hush of a breath drawn in and a breath exhaled.
But before this silence, there was something else.
Before the silence in the creation of us, there was poetry and song in the pondering of us.
We didn’t begin with a loud bang. We didn’t begin with a “Let there be- and it was so”. We didn’t begin with words at all.
We began with mud.
And breath.
And a song, deep in the heart of God.
‘So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.’
Genesis 1:27
When God created human beings a lyrical lilt entered the text and the lines became a poem, a song, a melody woven in light. Here in Genesis 1:27, at the genesis of us we have the first example of poetry in the Bible known as ‘poetic parallelism’ woven with heightened speech and poetic diction².
Against the canvas of all the patterned repetition of the creation of everything else on earth, this poetry speaks.
We were created differently.
To be different.
Like Him.
God found no words to describe us into being. It was the song in His heart that became the reality of us, the melody that guided His hands as He worked, the music within Him that spilled over into the mud. Into us.
It was personal. To Him. He was close.
As close as He intended to stay. With us. Always.
As close as He intended us to be. With Him. Always.
There was an intimacy in the beginning of us. A calling to closeness. An invitation to connection. We didn’t begin with a loud bang.
We began with the closeness of God.
From the beginning to the end, this is the story of the Bible, God drawing near to humankind. God with us. That was always His plan. The love of us. Our love of Him. Close. As close as breath.
That was the song in His heart that day. The song He spilled into the sinews of us. A love song. The song He sang over us in this garden long ago.
We weren’t just breathed into being. We were loved into being. And we truly love because we were first loved. By Him.
“We love because he first loved us”
1 John 4:19
Our story, the human story, the story we were created for and formed to live within, has always been a love story, a story of community and connection. A love story written for us from before all time began.
In the garden, at the beginning of our human story, the beginning of all our beginnings, love was everywhere. All the abundant gifts of God spoke abundantly of God’s abundant love. There was no lack of love because there was no lack of God.
But in all the lavish goodness, there was just one thing that was not good.
‘The Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone.’
Genesis 2:18
The animals were not enough (Genesis 2:19-20) and not even communion with God alone was enough. God wanted human community and connection for His children. He wanted for us what He always had.
Breathed into life by Love, we are our Father’s children. God is love (1 John 4:8). It’s the way He is. It’s who He is. We were created in love, by Love, for love. It’s the way we are. It’s who we are.
No matter how strong, self sufficient and independent we like to think we are, every human being needs community to thrive as a human being. We need love. We need each other. We need God. Without all these threads woven together into the human ecosystem we fall, with nothing underneath to catch us.
It was not good for the first human beings to be alone. So in love, God gave us one another.