Daily Bible Verses

In the beginning

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 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.  3 And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.

In the Hebrew Bible, the Spirit is written in the Hebrew feminine as…

Genesis 1: Creation summary:
* God speaks words of permission: “Let there be ….”
* What God permits then occurs “And there was …”  “And it was so”
* God separates - and makes things different and distinct
* God gives names to what is created so that they can be part of our lives
* God sees that creation is good
* Creation follows a rhythm :”there was evening and there was…

So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)

James Finley says:  

This is a paraphrase of Meister Eckhart: Imagine you’re standing before a full-length mirror, and imagine the image…

Adam and Eve are made in the “image of God” (Genesis 1:27) and are part of a creation which is “very good” (Genesis 1:31) AND Adam and Eve ate from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” as a result of which we all carry a frailty and woundedness. Just as goodness is inherent and shared, so it seems with evil. This is a very merciful teaching. Knowledge of our shared wound ought to free us from the burden of unnecessary and individual guilt or shame and help us to be forgiving and compassionate with ourselves and one another.

To deal with the inherent and shared existence of…

God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning – the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)

The first and greatest surprise—a miracle, really—is this: that anything exists at all…. The first pages of the Bible and the best thinking of today’s scientists are in full agreement: it all began in the beginning, when space and time, energy and matter, gravity and light, burst or bloomed or banged into being. In light of the Genesis story, we would say that the possibility of this universe overflowed into actuality as God, the…

Then God looked at all God had made, and God saw that it was very good.
—Genesis 1:31

In the pronouncement that “it is good,” the Creator is making an accurate judgment about all that exists. By proclaiming that everything is good, right, in order, and as it should be, God sets the state of earthly normalcy. “Good” becomes the once-and-for-all standard of life on earth….
In the first account of creation, each action and each result of God’s action is differentiated. Not one created part is the other, nor does it become the other. Each part of creation was made unique and after…

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31)

• In Genesis, God makes humans in his own image. Seeing a troublesome neighbour as someone bearing the image of God will change how we deal with them.
• In Genesis, Adam and Eve are told to steward creation on God’s behalf. Understanding that creation is God’s handiwork will affect how we make use of its resources.
• In Genesis, Adam and Eve listen to the voice of temptation and disobey God. Listening instead to God’s good plan in Genesis will give us the assurance to follow his…

Heavenly Father, give me grace to finish the work that I have been doing and rest for one day.

¹ Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
² By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 
³ Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had…

Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of life-giving water in all its forms: mist, rain and rivers. 
* Thank you too that “back in the day” you gave us the breath of life - that which makes us humans conscious living beings.

⁴ This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

⁵ Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth^[…