The Creation

I was supposed to post my comments to the Old Testament lesson on the Creation yesterday but I didn't make the time. I read most of it on my netbook while being jostled about on the Metro.

I'm impressed with how the manual referred to the original Hebrew roots of the King James translation, showing how "God" in the Bible's first line: "In the beginning, God created..." could actually also be interpreted as "gods." They talk about how the seven "days" referred to in the Old Testament could also have been translated to "ages," kind of like how we use the term "day of the dinosaur." Lots of interesting things in the Creation when you look at it like that.

As a writer, I'm interested in creativity/creation. I think that our desire/enjoyment/fulfillment as related to creation is divine. Maybe it's us remembering how we all gave God a hand back in the pre-existence in shaping things.

I've read that before God created everything physically, he created it spiritually. This has often sounded to me like some kind of rough draft, but obviously he didn't make any mistakes, right? I've heard it compared to outlining, to planning, to goal-setting, and so on.

To me, that concept always reminds me of faith. We have these spiritual concepts--repentance, obedience to certain commandments, love your neighbor--and faith is taking those spiritual concepts and making them actually happen in the temporal realm--ie, "real life." (Or RL for all you roleplayers out there. Holla!)

So in a way, our whole life is the Creation--laying down a spiritual creation and then doing our best to enact a physical one. And that act is faith.

Or, you know, creation.

Think about writer's block: staring at a blank, white page (or, for all you whippersnappers, an open word document), not knowing what to write, knowing that you should have something to say that should fill up that open blankness, but not being able to. Creation is absolutely an act of faith. The scriptures mention the Creation taking place because "there is space there." That seems like a really random reason until, as a writer, you see a blank piece of paper and imagine everything you might make of it.

I think that creation holds a vital role in everyone's lives, whether they're wannabe writers like me or parents or just random people who want to do the right things, because creation is an act of faith--and the Creation was a monstrous act of faith we can probably learn a lot from.