Genesis 1:1-5 — “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”
Evening & Morning
Day 1 of Creation is the first of 3 days relating to the order of TIME. (The other two are days 4 and 7.) Those of us from Western cultures think of a day as beginning with morning and ending with evening, structured around our work days. But that’s not the order listed in the passage above. Gen. 1:5 says, “And there was evening, and there was morning–the first day.” In Jewish culture, the day starts with the evening. The day starts with REST. Keeping that order in mind will change how you read descriptions of days and times in the Bible.
The creation of evening and morning is why (practicing) Jewish people make it a regular practice to say the Shema prayer twice a day. The very beginning of it is familiar to Christians (Deut. 6:4-5): “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Saying the whole prayer twice daily–before bedtime and when we wake up–creates the discipline in us to align our hearts with God. Before work, and after work, we align with God. This is the point of daily devotional time.
Darkness, Light, & Remembering
Before God created light, there was darkness. He created light FROM the darkness. Darkness is where the beauty begins. Like with any creative process, there’s a sudden spark of inspiration from a time of pain, sadness, struggle, or obscurity.
Darkness is what covered Egypt during the 10th plague as the spirit of Death struck every firstborn. But it was by the blood of slain lambs that the Israelites were spared. The blood was life, setting the Israelites apart as a nation of light in a dark place.
Day 1 of Creation corresponds to the Passover Seder meal–the first of the 7 feasts on the Jewish calendar–which is for remembering the goodness of God in sparing Israel from death. It is for remembering salvation, the start of the transition out of slavery. The actual meal time is structured around the retelling of this story and contains certain foods that symbolize elements of the story.
Prayer & Worship Application
Day 1 teaches us about keeping a daily devotional time to posture our hearts before God, to love Him with our entire being, and to rest in His presence. It’s also an invitation to remember the story of our salvation, or any other time we’ve seen God move us from a place of darkness into light. And the invitation is not just about remembering as a reminder to ourselves, but also as a testimony to our wider communities.
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