Re'shiyth

I have been here since your very beginning. I created your deep night sky and the crumbles of black forest earth. It began formless, but I knew that I wanted YOU to have a form. So as I lay in the penetrating blackness over the lifeless waters, I thought of what to make for you.

The very first thing I created for you was light. I wanted this brilliance for your eyes, even when there was nothing but light to see. I separated this from the darkness, because there cannot be darkness where I have placed light. I made night, a time when darkness would stain the brightness I placed there. Stain, but not consume, for I never want my children to be separated from the Light.

The first day...I watched the first sunrise and I thought of you. From the very beginning I was dreaming of you, the pinnacle of my creation. As morning light speared the sky, sharp and clear, I began to speak.

"I'll separate water from water, hanging a covering of white mists above the rumbling depth below." Night again fell. I took my time, you see. I wanted it to be perfect for you.

Another morning, another sunrise. It bloomed across my sky as once again I began to speak. "Gather together the water below the sky! Bring forth dry ground. This...this is land. The water? They will be called the seas."

I thought of names for all of my creation, even what does not speak and move as creatures do. I named the world, but I let YOU name the life!

I created things that change and grow. I made plants that bring forth good things, fruits and flowers. For you! I do not like the same thing over and over. My desire is for variety and changes in the world, as is my desire for you. Yet even so, each is to bring forth life according to it's kind. My original design does not deviate, but I created room for originality.

I looked at these trees and thought of sitting in their shade with you. I saw my flowers and smiled at how you would delight in them. I saw the fruit and wondered what your reaction to their tastes would be. I saw beauty and glory. And I saw that it was all for you.

I created order amidst chaos. But there is also adventure and wildness. I made creatures numerous and so various that none is the same as another. I placed beings of life in the water, some so small you cannot see them. Others were so large that you feel tinier than a snail. 

I drew feathers from the skin of birds, and patiently taught them to fly. I soared through the sky with them. I saw that they were beautiful. I gave them voices of song for you, your first melodies. 

I made creatures of the land, small and large, fierce and gentle, loud and silent, beautiful and...beautiful, for all creation is beauty to me. I began to be so very excited as I put the finishing touches on the animals, tugging out tails and pushing in noses and speaking life into them. I knew that you were on the way. I knew that my most awesome deed was soon to come...

That day, the sixth day, I made...you. I knew just how to make you, too. In the image of myself, in such a way that I knew we could know each other intimately, walk together and delight in each other. I made you with a capability to love more deeply than any other creature. I stretched your mind and I breathed into you my very essence. I made you to rule every other thing that had life pulsing through it's form. Your heartbeat began at my word, and I loved the sound.

You were created and you were good. Very, very good.

I was so excited about you that I immediately began building a home for you. I planted a garden and called it Eden, choosing the most beautiful plants for your new eyes to see. I placed there only the best tasting vegetation for your mouth to discover. I put there the best of the most exceptional because I was so enthralled with you. And there I placed the Tree of Life, more beautiful and mighty than all other trees. I wanted to be with you forever, you see, always with me, always walking in this paradise I'd made. I wanted you to have life flow between you and I the way it does between the Father and Son and Spirit. Life--I created you for life.

I also placed in Eden the Tree of Knowledge. I never wanted you as a slave. I never wanted you as a robot, brainless and dumbly following me about the garden. Your love would have tasted acrid, because I know what love truly is--it is not without choice. So I gave you the freedom to choose. 

"You can eat from any tree in the garden, but please, don't kill yourself by eating the Tree of Knowledge. If you do, I promise you, you will die. I created you free, to choose... but you mustn't eat from this tree!"

And then you and I had an amazing time as I watched you be introduced to each animal I had made for you. Sometimes you knew right away what it should be named, animals like the lion, the mouse--the platypus when you began to feel silly. Others took longer to name, forming the sounds of leviathan, or okapi. I smiled with joy as you named them all. But something was missing...something that I had had in mind since the first moment you breathed. But I wanted you to realize as we looked through all of creation that something was still missing. As I had molded your bones I paid special mind to an upcoming event like none other.

I made your other half. I made your perfect help-mate. I made something that you would see as the most beautiful thing in all of creation, a being that came second only to myself. You named her Eve, because she came from your own body. Not your feet, so that she was not below you, nor your head that she was above. I took her from your ribs, where your heart is protected, the cage that surrounds the lungs that bring life into your body. I did this on purpose.

I delighted in your voices, in your bodies, in your love. We walked together every day, and together we discovered new things. We stayed together in your home, in Eden. I never wanted anything more, some other being that I could create better than you. You were enough, you were perfect. Until...