Although we might remember the book of Genesis as a collection of some of the best-known tales from our Sunday School days – Adam and Eve, Jacob and Esau, Noah and his Ark – it is so much more than that. Knowing and understanding what happens in this first book of the Bible lays the foundations for us to begin to understand everything that is to follow.

Here, we read how God creates ultimate order out of ultimate chaos. Genesis 1 is almost a dramatic poem: the Creator speaks, and the natural world responds. Light is separated from darkness, the sky from the earth, the land from the seas. From disorder comes order. From chaos comes creation. And God looks at it all and declares it to be good.

As we read on through Genesis, we will see how the coming of sin into this perfect world began to unravel the order that God had created, bringing chaos once again into the world. Yet we know that our all-seeing God had already made a plan to once again turn chaos into order, first through his covenant with Abraham, and then through his son, Jesus Christ.

This is the work that God longs to do in creation, and in our lives: to take the chaos created by sin, and to restore order. So much of what we read in Scripture is about understanding what God’s order looks like, and how he intends to achieve it. Our challenge is to submit to God’s ordering of the chaos.

Whatever is going on in the world, or in our lives, we can rest assured that our Sovereign Lord is not idle. He longs to bring his divine and beautiful order into lives and societies that have fallen into chaos. The answer to the chaos and calamity is in him. Do we really believe that? Do we really grasp it? Will we submit to him today and allow him to bring order in our own lives?

next devotional >>

 

 

NEWBOLD COMMUNITY CHURCH