"How It All Began"

Pastor Laura Guy

May 25, 2008

Here's an instant replay of what happened in worship:

We started off the summer sermon series of Old Testament stories with the first story in the Bible - the story of Creation in Genesis 1.
We realized that this story has been at the center of the controversy over Creationism vs Evolution. But even if we move beyond that, there is another problem that people of faith often encounter with this story. Most scholars believe that the Israelite account of creation was based on the creation stories (myths) of other ancient cultures they came into contact with. But there is a big difference between the Hebrew version of creation and other ancient versions. In other cultures, creation came about as an act of violence, with a hero saving the day from some kind of monstrous god and then creating the world. In the Judeo-Christian account of Creation, there is only one God (Christians see the Trinity present), Who creates out of love, simply because He chooses to. This is one of the striking characteristics of our Creation story.
We decided to set aside all the discussion and debate about the story and simply receive it as it is given to us, a beautiful and poetic account of how God created simply by speaking things into existence. To try to experience it as a child, sitting in God's lap, Pastor Laura read the Creation story from Eugene Peterson's paraphrase, The Message, changing the pronouns to first person so God could tell the story to us. She sat in a rocking chair to read it to us.
We saw that we are a part of the story, we are something that God created and declared to be "very good." We are given the earth and its creatures as a gift to care for so that future generations will also see God's handiwork.
We prayed for God's help to care for the earth.
We shared communion at the table of love.