How I Wrote the Creation Story
I had been listening and re-listening to C.S. Lewis’ sermon “The Weight of Glory” as I navigated my daily journeys around town. Lewis’s words on our inborn desire for beauty, heaven, and union with Christ touched me so much that I played them several times. He spoke of smelling a flower we have not yet found, of an echo to a song we have not heard, and of a letter written from a country we have not visited. Each of those glimpses into our hope and desire for a place or a person that we sense exists somewhere just beyond our understanding, or our experience is something we cannot fully explain.
I was writing a story about God’s creation in Genesis 1-2 when I realized that that experience was the same as the one Lewis spoke about. We can not fully grasp or understand the first garden or the experience of the first man and woman residing in the world so wonderfully made for them to enjoy forever. We cannot fathom the joy, the rightness of a world in which animals coexisted in peace, in which food gathering was not a brow-beating task but probably involved a ramble down a path and a tug on a delectable plant. We cannot understand how conversing with God was as simple as an evening stroll underneath a sky ravished with stars.
When I teach children the story of creation, I slow it down, take their imagination by the hand, and help them see, feel, hear, and taste what it must have been like to be in the world before it was marred. We can only imagine. Someday, in the new Eden, we will know, but we can pretend and wonder for now.
What would it be like to name the animals? To look into a cheetah’s eyes and name him the fastest creature on the planet? To feed oneself from food you found and picked and were satisfied with? Or to walk and talk to God each day? What would you talk about? What questions would he ask you? What would you ask him?
The story of creation isn’t to be taught as a quiz. What did God create on Day 4? It’s an immersion experience into what the world was like when there was no sin. Genesis 1-2 are the foundation of our worldview that God created, that He made people to be like him, in his image, and that it was good. It is filled with beauty and joy. Breathe deep into this story. Know it well. It’s from where we came. It’s the place for which we were intended to live forever.
