A Walk Through Genesis One
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters." The two key concepts that the rest of the chapter answers is "Without form" and "void". On Days 1, 2, 3, God forms the creation and on the corresponding days of 4, 5, 6 He fills the void with creatures. This is the structure of the rest of the first creation account until we crown the week with the Sabbath Day of rest.
A World with the Family at the Center
We will break the Bible into manageable chunks so that we can get the BIG PICTURE of what God is doing. These chunks are part of the Bible's own structure and if we miss them, then we will miss out on what God is doing and why He is doing it. The Bible is built upon the ancient practice of covenant. We don't really share their notion of a covenant today, so we need to understand this concept really well. Let's compare covenants with contracts.
Why is it so difficult to get into the Bible?
The Bible is not a book. It is a collection or library (Latin: biblia) composed of 73 books written over the course of centuries, through the hands of dozens of writers, redactors, and compilers, both men and women. These books are based on even older traditions passed down from generation to generation.
Man's Search for Meaning
Aristotle, the greatest of the Ancient Greek philosophers, taught that moral reasoning was based upon the telos, or a thing’s end or purpose. The telos tells us why it exists. Once we know the purpose of a thing, we can evaluate it. You cannot say if a thing is good or bad if you have no understanding of its purpose. For instance, if the pocket watch is too heavy to be comfortably carried and is a bit too large to fit in most pockets and does not keep time well, we would say that it is a bad watch. From these facts, we can form an evaluative judgment, but only if we know its telos or purpose.
Palm Sunday Meditation
A few days later those same crowds are crying out at Jesus, but instead of "Save us, Son of David!" They are crying out for his death, "Crucify him!" Ironically, the answer to their first cry "Hosanna!" is through their second cry, "Crucify him!" The reversal becomes salvific. It was by his stripes that we are healed.