When my grandson and I were working on a jigsaw puzzle I discovered that he was more adept than I in finding the pieces we were looking for to complete a section. I was wishing that the pieces were larger. I could see the big picture but found it hard to see which pieces fitted into that picture. What are you: a big picture person or a detail person? So many of us have difficulties in life because we do not see the big picture. We get obsessed with the latest crisis or event in our lives. We think that the little piece of life we see is all there is when it is only one part of the whole. We can get overwhelmed with the immediate by not having the perspective the big picture can give us. Current events trouble us because we do not have the perspective of history. Present injustices are not considered in the events that preceded them and created the conditions of today. Most, if not all, of today’s cultural and ethnic challenges can be understood if the actions and events of centuries ago are taken into account. We cannot blame one another for the acts of our great-great-grandparents. Reading history and the ancient documents of the Bible can give us an awareness of our limited knowledge. Genesis 1, for example, gives us the big picture of creation through building one layer upon another from the perspective of this earth.

Ann Finkbeiner’s A Grand and Bold Thing, is an account of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which has mapped nearly a million galaxies and identified 76,000 quasars – the black-hole-powered cauldrons that sit at the centers of galaxies, shining so brightly that they can be seen all the way across the universe. The observable universe contains a hundred billion galaxies harboring more stars than there are grains of sand on all our planet’s beaches.

So when we read the Bible, we need to take into account the grand and bold thing that God created when he spoke the universe into being. There is a wonder to creation. We read that God brought order out of chaos: “The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep” (Gen 1:2).  Out of this nothingness, this emptiness, this non-existence, God said, “Let there be light.” Light springs forth from darkness, and “God saw that the light was good.”

What God did for the universe he does also for each one of us, when he spiritually re-creates us. His Spirit hovers over us. His Word speaks to us. His purpose in our creation is to bring order out of the chaos of our lives, and to bring light out of darkness. This, we call salvation, which happens when we are born from above by the Spirit.  I was 14 years old when I invited Jesus into my life as my Savior and Lord, after being challenged to do so by Corrie ten Boom, a survivor of Ravensbruck concentration camp in World War II (q.v.Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place). My life was radically changed from that time onward. My views and destiny were altered from a teenager to an eternal perspective.

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world, he who follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)  “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light to shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor 4:6) This becomes a reality for everyone who opens their heart to Jesus and follows him.

But there is much chaos and darkness in the world. The gratuitous sex, mindless violence, deceit and greed in so many novels, movies and real life is dehumanizing and brutal. The darkness of human existence presses in on us through selfish, unkind, hateful and shameful attitudes and actions. So many people live chaotic lives without direction or fulfillment. They need to be re-created. They need to be born from above by the Spirit. Every day we need to let God’s Spirit and Word speak the light through us. We cannot fight the chaos and darkness in our own strength. We need the mighty power of God to overcome the black holes of our sinful nature and secular culture.

God created the greater light and the lesser light, and the stars to govern the day and the night, to separate light from darkness. Genesis does not name them the sun and the moon because in many neighboring cultures they were the names of gods. Here God rules over them as his creatures that do not have a life of their own or are divine in any way. Likewise the stars are not worthy of worship but are simply God’s creations. They do not control human destiny and are unimportant compared to God. The worship of sun or moon gods was prevalent in the ancient world, as it is today in primitive societies. The practice of astrology, and the consultation of horoscopes and psychics is still popular in our own day. Sophisticated magazines and the daily newspapers, still carry horoscopes, even when they avoid mention of religion.

Lacking a sure compass many people seek order for their chaotic lives, and light for their darkness, by gambling on the inspiration of dark powers. They read palms, the cards or the tea leaves in the hope of winning the lottery of life. Lady Luck is a poor substitute for the Spirit and the Word of God who created all things. St. Paul warns against abandoning the faith by following deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. “Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales.”  (1 Timothy 4:1,7)

The purpose of the narrative was not to describe origins but to deliver humanity from idolatry, from worshipping objects in the natural world or universe, by pointing humanity to the divine order that is at the heart of reality.  (F.D. Maurice in John Rogerson, Reading Genesis After Darwin, ed. Wilkinson & Barton, p.81)

While neighboring depraved cultures worshipped gods in the form of animals, birds or reptiles, the people of the Bible worshiped the one and only God. All living creatures in the sea, and the air, and on the land are produced and reproduce. As Charles Kingsley stated: “God makes things to make themselves.” God did not just start creation, he continues to create and sustain the entire universe through the process of biological development. At each stage he sees that what he is doing is good.

There is a goodness to creation, not a moral goodness, but the declaration that every creature is living as designed, every living thing is operating according to God’s purpose, it is fine and beautiful in its symmetry and functionality. Goodness or beauty is not that which pleases the eye but that which realizes the end intended for it. “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1Tim 4:4).  There is a purpose for everything. Everything is connected and part of a whole. We need to see the big picture of creation.

Seen in this way life is to be appreciated as a gift for which we need to be both thankful and humble. We know so little of it. We are like ants in a wood, who are ignorant of the world outside, unaware that their colony is hurtling around in space on a round ball spinning just under 1,000 m.p.h., logging over 1,600,000 miles a day around a sun racing around the center of our galaxy at 563,000 m.p.h.

Though we now know that we are only a small and frightened, seemingly insignificant speck on a little path in one galaxy among millions of galaxies, ours is the only known place in this immense universe where the conditions for human life are found…This marvelous cornucopia of atmosphere, temperature, water, fertile soil, gravity, protective layers against incoming radiation, and recycling by superb weather systems separates us from all other spaces in the cosmos. But our little ant, poor thing, doesn’t even realize that.  (Junius Stenseth, An Ant in the Woods, Acta Kierkegaardiana, Vo.2, p.276)

Can you see this big picture? Can you appreciate life as a gift? Are you thankful for it? Are you humbled by the wonder of creation? Are you impressed by its goodness, its fitness, how it works, how everything is connected to the whole? All this is the work of God through Christ, whom we are called to worship, to serve, to love. Let him bring order out of chaos in your life, light out of darkness, as you follow the Light of the World.

Lord, the light of your love is shining

in the midst of the darkness shining;

Jesus, Light of the World shine upon us,

set us free by the truth you now bring us.

Shine on me, shine on me.

 

Shine, Jesus shine,

fill this land with the Father’s glory,

blaze, Spirit, blaze, set our hearts on fire;

Flow, river, flow,

flood the nations with grace and mercy,

Send forth your word, Lord,

and let there be light.

(Graham Kendrick)