05/06/2008
9Then God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10God called the dry land “earth,” and He called the gathering of the water “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
Lo'ihi is a young but inactive volcano off the south-eastern coast of the big island of Hawaii. You may not have heard of it because it is under water – about 3,000 feet underwater. The summit of this volcano rises nearly 15,000 feet from its south-eastern base of the ocean floor, and it is presumed that it will emerge as an island anywhere from 1000 years to 50,000 years. So, don’t hold your breath.
In the movie “Waterworld” the population has been forced to live at sea and the most prized commodity of all was not gold or silver, but a handful of soil. The movie examines the perils and hardship of living a life completely afloat. While the movie is fantasy, I believe that a life totally adrift would be difficult, if not impossible. We need land. Even Columbus on his journeys into the unknown expanse of the sea needed provisions from the land—fruit, vegetables, and even wood for the ship itself. Wool and cotton were needed for the sails, rigging, and clothing. A life lived completely at sea would indeed be a different life than we now enjoy.
In these verses, God commands the dry land to appear. I presume that the “waters” mentioned may still be a cauldron of muddy, murky stuff. God commanded the water to yield dry land, and as simple as that, we had land masses amid the turbulent waters. When I read this passage, I am reminded of a song that quotes Job. “Who told the waters, you can only come this far?”
8 Who
enclosed the sea behind doors
when it burst from the womb,
9
when I made the clouds
its garment
and thick darkness its blanket,
10 when I determined
its boundaries
and put [its]
bars and doors in place,
11 when
I declared: “You may come this far, but no farther;
your proud waves stop here”?
I get this fascinating mental picture of God standing on the shore, drawing a line in the sand with His finger: “You may come this far, but no farther.”
We need to remember that all creation is under the command of God. What He dictates becomes so without question. For God to speak to the seas and establish their limits is such an intriguing image for me. It reminds me of His authority over all nature.
Jesus commanded the storm over the sea of Galilee to cease and it became calm. In this act, Jesus demonstrated His divinity.
The first creation was time,
The second creation was truth (not excluding visible light),
The third creation was space (or three dimensions of geometry),
The fourth creation was land and sea,
While atheistic scientists (not all are atheist) try to convince the world that this earth came about by accident, we have a beautiful picture of our God standing over all creation commanding the grandest and even the smallest details of creation as if making a dictation to a secretary.
The fact that we struggle to understand how God created things should not lead us to the conclusion that an intelligent designer was not at work. But rather, our inability to explain it should lead us to conclude that a greater, outside power was at work.
Jeff Justus
Cleff Publishing
www.cleffpublishing.com
©2008 Cleff Publishing, all rights reserved.
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