“Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise him in the heights above. Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his heavenly hosts. Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars. Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. He set them in place for ever and ever; he gave a decree that will never pass away.” (Psalm 148:1-6)

Day 4, God gets specific. 

In a flurry of cosmic dust, God dots the galaxy with stars and sets up a system in which human beings will live. Marking out days, seasons, years and acting as a broadcast of His power to the universe; the expanse is filled and organized.

The clocklike organization of the universe runs as God created it to run. The sun rises and sets, the moon progresses through its phases, stars are born and die and we live and breathe by the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and heat energy they emit. Praise God for His solar system!

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Psalm 19:1-4)

Being made in His image, My husband likes filling our little part of the universe with systems. We are naturally disorganized people; systems help us to function more effectively...if we maintain them! He cries regularly about how the members of His household wreck his systems. When the next panic arises due to disregarding the systems, a flurry of accusations and excuses swirl.

"That's why I made the system! Respect the system...maintain the system!" Poor Phil, he tries so hard!

God did not stop ordering life on the planet with the solar system. There are natural laws and there are spiritual laws that we are subject to...whether we think them true and effective or not. He is not susceptible to people messing with His systems, like Phil, but His creation is. Our stubborn independence won't alter His ultimate purposes but it will ruin us! Funny that in our days and nights we think we can disregard God's systems and blame Him for the resulting panic and disorder!  When living within His systems, we live and breathe in hope-filled order. 

When living outside His systems, we suffer. Read Romans 1! God made life here to run like a finely tuned machine. If we mess with the system, we find ourselves without excuse and no one else to blame!

 "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God...professing to be wise they became fools...They exchanged the truth of God for a lie...God gave them over to degrading passions...receiving in their own persons the penalty for their error...and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind... " Rom. 1:20-21a,22,25a,26a,28a.

Life

sprouting, spreading

This is what stumps cynics...spontaneous life from non-living matter.
As the waters found their boundaries by the word of God...so life came into existence.
"Let the earth sprout..."
Just the right words at just the right time produced life to shelter and nurture more life.
It was good.
It was God.
 Dormancy birthed germination. Shoots of green leapt through the soil, turning the earth into a habitat.
 Words speaking life, and life producing more life.
I wish my life and words brought life all the time. But the truth is sometimes, even if unintentionally, my words have produced nothing of vibrancy or nourishment. Regret alone cannot reverse the damage of my words, death coming from the non-living places of my heart and right out of my mouth...or the keys of my keyboard.
But living from non-living...this is miraculous. And I ask God, "speak life...here, now. Please, produce spontaneous life from what my words have smothered."
Dormant soil in the hands of the Creator can still sprout something He can call "good",
something that nurtures
life...and stumps cynics.

⁹ And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry land Earth,^[d] and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

¹¹ And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants^[e] yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so.¹² The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ¹³ And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

Like an artist gathering supplies, God made the heavens and the earth. It was all there. All of the particles that would bump and mingle to make His idea of creation a reality. The invisible was becoming visible. God set up shop and got to work. Bringing order to chaos, He made the raw materials then made the most wondrously complex system of life from them. The light rained down bringing heat, increasing energy and then He drew the water up and made the atmosphere. And this, God called "Heaven". An atmosphere suddenly surrounded a hydrosphere...a vapor encircled a watery, gravely globe. "He stretched out the heavens like a curtain" Is.40:22, providing a protection for the living to come. There was evening, there was morning- day 2.

"The height of the heavens should mind us of God's supremacy, and the infinite distance that is between us and him; the brightness of the heavens, and their purity, should mind us of his majesty, and perfect holiness; the vastness of the heavens, and their encompassing the earth, and influence upon it, should mind us of his immensity and universal providence." Wesley's Explanatory Notes

The more I dig into the grounds of my faith, the more I am convinced of the truth of it. Just as light "exploded into light", faith explodes into faith. I am not a scientist; but astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology, physics (etc.) in and of themselves provide few conclusions.... only more questions. It is not science alone that proves or disproves God and creation...it is faith. It is where you find your beginning. My beginning is "in the beginning God"...from there I am amazed and overwhelmed 
at the proof of Him.

Clouds
Sinking to inverted rim
Fraying edges...
tearing free.
Revealing
rising
upward
onward
forever.
Arcing center
stretching
drawing
summoning,
me.

"Let there be light..." Gen. 1:2-5

Atoms gyrated, pulsed and pooled-
an incoherent pit.
Ingredients of life restrained,
and champing at the bit.
 Beneath the skin of darkness,
cells and systems waited word
while the stirring of His Spirit
 trained and fluttered like a bird.
"Let there be light"came thund'ring,
without ears to hear the clap
 Fingered filiments came spiraling
and pulled the darkness back.
Light exploded into light
as God sighed in delight
and placed the edge of darkness
 beside day
and called it "night".

"In the beginning God created..."

"In the beginning God created"- The initiation of time was God's act of creating. Before anything else, before everything else
 He was.
God is the pre-existant condition on which everything else hinges.
There was God
then...
then God created. 
He made what wasn't there before:
the heavens
and the earth.

The heavens and the earth traveled from the mind of God to become a vast universe that we only know in part.

This is one quality of God I really wish I had...to make ideas realities.
God had an idea.
God made it reality.
What was only in his mind was brought into physical existence...
Something to be seen
Something to be heard
Something to be touched, smelled, felt
of God.
All of these somethings a communication of His beauty, power, tenderness, goodness.
All of these somethings the pronouncement of His reality.
"In the beginning, God created..." Genesis 1:1

I know it's highly unorthodox to speak of God screaming. If there is a God, doesn't He just whisper on the wind or float around in silence, perceived only through some form of mental telepathy? In my life I have experienced His presence and communication in many ways...but I am no mystic so sometimes, He screams. No, it isn't audible to the human ear but to the mind, it is deafening. "I AM HERE. I AM REAL. I MADE YOU. I LOVE YOU. YOU HAVE A FUTURE WITH ME".
A few years ago we took a trip to Zion National Park and could not wait to hike back into the cliffs. Day one was drizzly but my husband and kids found a hidden pool and jumped in. Behind them a sheered rock wall imposed, exposing layers of  earth that would go unseen were it not for a catastrophic event. Something had happened in that place long, long ago to crack the massive wall and carry it away. So of course, being creationists, we discussed the flood. To us, the formation was a divine scream. It was a one of those life moments even my clown fish memory won't forget...I hope. As we returned to the parking lot, a double rainbow (God's sign of promise after the flood), vibrant and complete, arched itself over the very spot we had just been. Coincidence? Not to me!
This is one story in an endless train of stories from my life of God's clear communication:  "I AM HERE. I AM REAL. I MADE YOU. I LOVE YOU. YOU HAVE A FUTURE WITH ME". Yet, there have been long desperate stretches of His silence too, so it is with understanding and not ignorance that I write. In these times, I have clung to His Word; waiting and hoping for the scream to come again.
Genesis is the perfect book to study when wrestling with the issue of believing in or hearing from God. God first spoke through creation...then His presence...then His messengers...then His people...Then His Word and through it all, His Son. So much God talk in one book!
All of the research in the world and throughout history
cannot disprove God
If you begin
by hearing His voice.
"In the beginning, God..." Genesis1:1

Seven. A crow, a woodpecker, and at least five other birds interrupted my quiet yesterday with declarations that they too made it through the winter. Does it mean youth is fading when you start counting bird calls? Beginnings and the number seven and color exploding from broken and tangled limbs...it all made me want to study Genesis.
"In the beginning God..."- The great human saga had a point of initiation. There was an act that kicked off time and the initiator was God.
Kings and peasants, politicians and scientists, no-names and big names, artists and musicians have spent  millennials arguing for and against Him. No matter,
"Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." Psalm 90:2
Knowing and believing the truth of this verse, must start at the beginning.