Before anything existed — before stars, before animals, before you — there was God. And God was not lonely or bored. God has always existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, loving each other perfectly.
Then God spoke.
"Let there be light!" he said, and light exploded into being. Before that moment there was only darkness and empty nothingness. But God's word is so powerful that when he speaks, things happen.
Day by day, God kept creating. He separated the light from the darkness and called them Day and Night. He stretched out a great blue sky above the waters. He gathered the seas together and let dry land appear, then filled the land with grass, trees, and flowers bursting with fruit.
Then God made the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night. He filled the seas with fish — every kind you can imagine — and sent birds soaring through the sky. He made creatures on the land: cattle and lions and lizards and bears, each one exactly as he designed.
And then came the most special part.
God said, "Let us make man in our image." He formed the first man, Adam, from the dust of the ground and breathed life into his lungs. Adam was like no other creature — he bore the image of God himself, made to know God, love God, and rule over the earth as God's representative.
God looked at everything he had made. "Very good," he said.
On the seventh day, God rested. Not because he was tired — he never gets tired. He rested to enjoy his creation and to show that his work was finished and complete. He blessed the seventh day and made it holy.
The whole universe is not an accident. Every star, every sunrise, every sleeping baby — all of it is the work of a God who creates on purpose and calls it good.
Christ in This Story
The opening words of Genesis ("In the beginning...") echo the opening of John's Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John is saying that Jesus — the Word — was there at creation. In fact, Colossians 1:16 tells us that "all things were created through him and for him." The universe was made through Jesus and belongs to him. When Jesus healed the blind, calmed storms, and multiplied bread, he was not doing something foreign to his nature — he was acting as the Creator he has always been.
Historical Context
Ancient Near Eastern cultures (like Babylon and Egypt) had their own creation stories, but they were very different from Genesis. In those stories, the world was created from a battle between gods, and humans were made to be slaves for the gods. Genesis says something radically different: there is one God, he creates with ease by his word, and humans are not slaves but his image-bearers, given dignity and a royal calling. This was an extraordinary claim in the ancient world.
The Hebrew word for "create" used in Genesis 1:1 (bara) is reserved only for God. Only God creates from nothing. Everything else that is made uses materials that already exist — but God made the materials themselves.
✦ This story also appears in the Quran
For parents: This biblical account has a parallel in the Quran (Islam's holy book), but the two versions differ in important ways. The Quran retells many Old and New Testament stories — sometimes similarly, sometimes with significant changes in detail, meaning, or theology.
This is a great opportunity to help your children know the biblical account well, so they can recognize differences if they ever encounter them. The Bible is our authoritative source; where the Quran diverges, we hold to what God's Word says.
Let's Pray
Dear God, thank you for making the whole world — and for making me. Help me to remember that I am your image-bearer, and that everything I see was made by you on purpose. Amen.