“In the beginning, when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness, and the Spirit of God was moving over the water. Then God commanded, ‘Let there be light’ – and light appeared.” Genesis 1:1-3, GNT

 

According to the very first three verses in the Bible, God created everything by just a word or command. The poet of Psalm 33:6,9 tells us: “The Lord created the heavens by his command, the sun, moon, and stars by his spoken word. When he spoke, the world was created; at his command everything appeared.”

 

We are not able to fathom the true omnipotence of God by way of our small brains. The people in the time that Genesis was written still believed in a system where our planet earth was in the centre and even when verse one talks about the creation of the universe, they gave precedence to the story of the creation of the world. We, of modern times, know that long before that the universe itself was created, there was nothing, then God gave a command and everything appeared. Heaven and earth, galaxies, enormous dust clouds of space matter, pulsars and planets, all of it – God spoke, and it was there.

 

Scientists and astronomers say that billions of years ago, all matter was concentrated in what is called a singularity. Then suddenly, there was the big bang and out of this singularity spew forth the unbelievable amount of energy that was to be our universe. After the many books that I have read about this subject, the Big Bang theory seems very plausible to me, but where most scientists believe that the big bang happened all by itself, I believe that it happened because God commanded it.

 

Gideon Joubert wrote a book called ‘Die Groot Gedagte’, meaning The Great Idea. He quoted the famous British astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell. The gist of what Sir Bernard said is that our thoughts are limited to the point that we struggle to understand space and time. It is like getting lost in a thick fog without being able to see our way out. My brain is also much too small to understand all of this, but fortunately, my faith in God is big enough to find my way out of this thick fog. John brings everything into focus when, in John 1:3, he has this to say about Jesus: “Through him God made all things; not one thing in all creation was made without him.”

 

Prayer: We thank you for being the Almighty God who only had to command and the universe sprang forth. Please help me to understand how great thou art every day. Amen