One of the best ways of spending one’s free time is to have a hobby.  This may involve making something – maybe doing woodwork or making models or cooking delicious meals. 

Creation out of nothing

Whatever we make, we make it out of something else and that something else in the beginning came from the earth.  Take for example, a garden spade: the wooden handle comes from a tree, and the steel blade from iron ore dug out of the ground.  So when we make anything, what we really do is take something, such as wood, and turn into something else, a chair or a table.

When, however, we say that God is the Maker or Creator of Heaven and Earth, we mean that he made things where before there was just empty space.  So the first words of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, are “In the beginning when God created (our emphasis) the heavens and the earth…” (NRSV, 1:1).

What Genesis teaches

It is very important to remember that the first two chapters of Genesis were written in order to teach us who made the world rather than exactly how it was made.  Scientists can tell us how and when the world was made and they know more about it than the people did at the time Genesis was written.  Everyone, for example, in those days thought that the world was flat like a plate and that the sky was hard and solid like a huge dish-cover.

There is one much more important question, however, that the scientists cannot answer and that is, “Who made the world?” which is just the thing that these old writers did know.  So the Bible tells us what science cannot tell us, that God made the world. 

We can think of these chapters of Genesis which describe the Creation as a chest full of treasure.  A treasure-chest may be very beautiful, but the really valuable thing is the gold inside.  In the same way these stories of the Creation are very beautiful, but the really valuable thing is the great truth they contain – that all things were created by God.  So we will not be worried if we find they are not quite right in what they say about the way he made things.