What You Believe Matters 3 – Creator of Heaven and Earth
The second thing said about God the Father in the Creed is a jump off spot for many a conversation. Some people find it hard to believe that there is a creator who is watching over all that he created. We won’t talk about all of the theories that surround where all of this started. You know them, the Big Bang, a God who started all of this and backed off and then the God who spoke all of this into existence and is carefully watching over it every day. I lean towards the belief that God is the creator of heaven and earth.
The first words of our Bible say it pretty clearly in Genesis 1:1 (NLT). “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” I believe that God created the earth, now was it 6 days or years or time, I’m not sure, I just know he created what we see. I also think that before the words were spoken that there was a conversation in heaven about what starting all of this could lead to. I wonder if the three of them talked about how things could go wrong and one of them would need to come to what they created to fix it. But that is a story for a different time. Let’s talk about what God being the creator means to our lives.
The flow of the story is that God created the earth, heavens, sea and land, the grass and trees, animals and then Adam. All of creation was spoken into being until God created man. The Bible says he formed man from the dust of the ground and then breathed the breath of life into him. God took his time with us, he gave us a soul and a spirit that is passed from each one of us to the next generation that follows. God’s touch on our lives did not stop with that breath but He has been creating within us since that day. When all of this was done God turned to Adam and asked him to watch over all the other things that had been created.
In Genesis 2:15 the Bible puts it this way: “The LORD God put the man in the garden of Eden to care for it and work it.” Adam was asked to care for the rest of creation. As he watched over and worked the garden is when God said it was not good for him to be alone, so he brought him Eve and together they were to care for the creation. I do not believe that God’s directive for us has changed all these years later. He still wants and expects man to care for creation.
That is sometimes the rub today. There are so many studies and so many conflicting ideas about what it means to care for the creation. Some seem to be like Chicken Little telling us that the sky is falling. Others seem to just shrug off the warnings and expect everything to just work out in the end. I think we have to land between the two. We have to be responsible for the creation God gave us. To do what we can do as individuals to make this natural world better for the collective group of us. How does this happen?
Sometimes it is donating to a group that helps communities dig wells for fresh water. Or just simply shorten the time you spend in the shower. Buy organic food. Walk when you can. You know stuff that is simple and seems small until everyone starts doing it. The effect that each of us doing a little bit can definitely change the world and maybe even reverse what has happened so far to our creation. We just cannot sit back and wring our hands or bury our heads. We have to understand God trusted us to take care of His creation. We have made a mess of things, but good thing is that we can straighten out what we have broken.
So the first question we have to ask is: “Are we willing to make the choices to care for the heaven and earth God trusted us with?” The second one is “What are you doing with this life created for you?” Hopefully we always remember that we were created for more and that each day is a chance for a new creation in our heart and lives.