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Day 1: The Contrast of Darkness and Light
There is significance in the first day’s creative act: God said, “Light!” And light appeared. The universe is established with God’s light shining through everything. There is a profound understanding of this in the way in which a day is described in Genesis and subsequently in all Jewish life. “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (verse 5, RSV). An odd way to describe a day, but not if you see it as a victory of God’s light. Evening has the sense, in Hebrew, of termination, bringing to a conclusion. A day is described first as the conclusion of the creative work of God, then night, a time of sleep, the incursion of darkness, a threat to the order of creation, a sign of chaos to come. Does night or light have the last word? The answer is in the phrase “and there was morning, one day.”
Morning in Hebrew has the meaning of “penetration.” [1] God’s day is not complete until light shines again, penetrating the darkness and dispersing the shadows. The creative action of God is light, which encloses and limits a temporary darkness. All that we see as a threat to God’s creative action is held in check and controlled by his light. The shadows are there—night descends upon life—and there is that which seems to defy God, to disturb his order and his purpose: sickness, death, trouble, and sorrow. But it does not have the last word: “And there was morning, one day.”
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Identify an area of your life in which you need God’s light to penetrate the dimness. Will night or light have the last word? Talk with God about the clarity you seek.
[1]. Strong’s Concordance, s.v. “boqer: morning,” http://biblehub.com/hebrew/1242.htm.
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Excerpted from "Every Step an Arrival"
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Copyright © 2018 Eugene H. Peterson.
Excerpted by permission of The Crown Publishing Group.
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