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If I should bake a cake from scratch (a rare occurrence), I would gather all my ingredients together, measure a cup of this and half-cup of that, crack the egg, grease the pans, and dust with flour. Then I’m ready to mix it all together, fill the cake pans, and put them in the oven.

It’s a process. There is order.

I always thought of God’s week of creation in linear order: 

Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6  Day  7

I’ve come to see it in a different order. In day 1, 2, and 3, He went from darkness and formlessness to light and distinct forms. He separated the waters below from the the waters above and created our atmosphere—sky. He separated the waters on our planet and created the earth with vegetation.

Day 1, 2, and 3 went from formlessness to form. God prepared the earth. He had all the ingredients measured and ready.

He had provided water for swimming things, sky for flying things, air for breath of life, and vegetation for nourishment. Now He was ready to fill the cake pan.

He filled the morning sky with sun and the night sky with the moon and stars. He filled the sea with fish and the sky with birds. He filled the earth with wild animals, domestic animals, and creeping things and then human beings to take care of it all. The cake was done!

Do you see the new order? Three days of preparation, three days of filling. One day built of the previous day. Order!

Day 1                                Day 4

light                                 Sun, moon, stars

Day 2                               Day 5

Sky, sea                         birds, fish

Day 3                               Day 6

earth, vegetation      animals, humans

I do believe this is one of many ways in which we are created in God’s image—the need to run our lives in some sense of order.

Amazingly, just as I finished that sentence, my iPhone light lit up with the news of a shooting in Orlando that took the lives of five people. A man was angry at his employer. This man’s life was clearly “out of order.”

God gave us a massive picture of life “in order.” He prepared and provided all we need; He even added beauty, variety of shapes, sizes, color,and pattern for our enjoyment. He wanted relationship with us and gave us the power of relationship with each other, as well as emotions and choice. 

At times, we learn to keep order in our lives, but when we clutter our lives with unhealthy choices, disorder follows. Look again at the graph above. Observe the balance between day 1 and 4, day 2 and 5, day 3 and 6.

And then comes the final balance. After all the work, it is time to rest. Set aside that special time, a holy time of reflection, rest from your labor, a time of worshiping this great God who created us.

Is it time to put something in order in your life? Maybe you could clean out a drawer as you think about it!

~ Joyce ~