The Dawn of All Things

By H. Boone Porter

Last week some things were said about the first Article of the Christian Faith, namely our belief in God as the maker and creator of all things. If this is what we believe, it affects our view of everything and anything. During the weeks and months ahead, we will be discussing a  variety of things seen in this light. 

It is not easy to picture God existing by himself from all eternity, beginning to make everything out of nothing. Nor is it easy to picture any alternatives. To imagine that everything which now is has been from all eternity, this is also to dumbfound the mind. Neither poetic imagination, nor common sense, nor the science of physics find it congenial to speak of an ever-existing universe. Neither is it easy to join our atheist friends and suppose that everything just happened to come into existence because of an accident. It is hard to picture an accident occurring before there is anything to have it!

For our ancestors long ago, and for our spiritual forebears who wrote the Bible it was also difficult to picture how everything came into existence at the dawn of time. For them, as for us, it was helpful to consider those entries into experience which we ourselves can see or feel. The most obvious personal experience of something like creation is the return of day every 24 hours. This is one of the most characteristic events on the surface of this planet. After the death-like non-consciousness of sleep, we awake, we find ourselves alive again, and we enter a new day. If we awake early enough, we will see the dawn. After the darkness of night, a gray twilight comes first. The dawn wind stirs. The shapes of clouds become visible. Soon we can see the face of the earth spread out, and trees, bushes, buildings, and bodies of water appear. The sun itself emerges above the horizon in glory. Birds are noisy, and if we live in the country, we will hear other animals too. In due course we ourselves, the last created, emerge onto the scene. 

Man goes forth to his work, and to his labor until the evening (Psalm 104:24)

Did you ever think that this, among other things, is what the first chapter of the Book of Genesis is talking about? The dawn of all things is suggested, subtly and with restraint, in terms of dawn as we know it. 

Of course many of us nowadays don’t really know it. We stay up late at night and arise under duress in the morning, more interested in getting our first cup of coffee than in seeing the sun as 

it comes forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber (Psalm 19:5)

For most of us a more vivid sense of renewal and the re-experiencing of creation occurs annually, in the Spring. As the short days and the cloudy weather of winter are passed, the warmer brighter days and the returning green of plants and trees affect most people very deeply. Those in the country watch the returning birds and hear the singing of the frogs in the hollows, while city-dwellers flock to parks and public gardens. The first chapter of Genesis is talking about this too, poetically overlaying the dawn and the new year in those mysterious archetypal, cosmic seven days. 

To reflect upon the Bible, to enter into the sacred history, to go through the threshold which it opens to us — to do this requires a certain give-and-take, a thoughtful and reflective exchange between our life and experiences, and the words of the Scriptures. As we do this, we discover that the things are indeed made new, we are made new, and we catch a glimpse, we feel a throbbing, we hear a whisper of the meaning of that ongoing mystery of the creative power of God. 

The Rev. Dr. H. Boone Porter was editor of The Living Church from 1977-1990. This article was published in our October 9, 1977 issue.

TLC Staff