Most mornings I sit out on our back porch facing east and watch for the morning light. Many mornings now it comes through the bare trees. In the dead of winter it’s still dark around 6 am, but soon the light will touch everything.  

“And God said: ‘Let there be light.’” “The voice of the Lord is full of power,” a morning psalm says. Light, darkness, sun and moon, water, earth, plants and flowers that fill the earth, birds of the air, fish of the sea, animals that roam the earth and  humans like us are brought into being by God’s voice. In our readings today and tomorrow we have the creation account from the Book of Genesis today and tomorrow..

We didn’t bring this all about and certainly it didn’t just happen. 

God’s voice, God’s power, God’s wisdom brings it all about. To see things right we need to have a worldview that sees things this way.The Book of Genesiss, which we begin in our lectionary today, tells us what we need to know. Each day is a Genesis day. God is at work, the morning light reminds us. 

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss,
while a mighty wind swept over the waters.

Then God said,
“Let there be light,” and there was light.
God saw how good the light was.
God then separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”
Thus evening came, and morning followed–the first day.

Then God said,
“Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters,
to separate one body of water from the other.”
And so it happened:
God made the dome,
and it separated the water above the dome from the water below it.
God called the dome “the sky.”
Evening came, and morning followed–the second day.

Then God said,
“Let the water under the sky be gathered into a single basin,
so that the dry land may appear.” 
And so it happened:
the water under the sky was gathered into its basin,
and the dry land appeared.
God called the dry land “the earth,”
and the basin of the water he called “the sea.”
God saw how good it was.
Then God said,
“Let the earth bring forth vegetation:
every kind of plant that bears seed
and every kind of fruit tree on earth
that bears fruit with its seed in it.”
And so it happened:
the earth brought forth every kind of plant that bears seed
and every kind of fruit tree on earth that
bears fruit with its seed in it.
God saw how good it was.
Evening came, and morning followed–the third day.

Then God said:
“Let there be lights in the dome of the sky,
to separate day from night.
Let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years,

and serve as luminaries in the dome of the sky,
to shed light upon the earth.”
And so it happened:
God made the two great lights,
the greater one to govern the day,
and the lesser one to govern the night;
and he made the stars.
God set them in the dome of the sky,
to shed light upon the earth,
to govern the day and the night,
and to separate the light from the darkness.
God saw how good it was.
Evening came, and morning followed–the fourth day. (Genesis 1:1-19)