Week 1 Genesis 1
A couple of years ago I realized that the bible could be divided into two pieces. There’s:
Piece #1 – the first 3 chapters of Genesis (the short piece)
Piece #2 – the other 1186 chapters of the bible (the long piece).
I know that it’s not a very helpful division for a bible-reader since the two pieces are so unbalanced it’s almost like having no division.
On the other hand it’s a useful key to have in mind since Piece #1 tells me what used to be but now isn’t. Then Piece #2 gets the lion’s share of space to explain the situation now – what is.
I read Piece #1 and wondered what’s my most important take-away. I decided it was this: in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Everything expands from there. The void. The darkness. The water. Light heaven earth oceans vegetation sun-moon-stars sea-animals birds land-animals humans. All pretty interesting. All pretty secondarily important. The main things is that: in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Personally I think that I’d still have The Most Important Thing in hand even if the rest of chapter 1 and all of 2 & 3 was lost.
Note: quote from Genesis 1:1 (NASB). Added note: I’m left with a bit of a dilemma: what do I do with Genesis 3? It’d really be too bad to lose it. For now I’ll rank the content of Piece #1 in this order-of-importance: 1) Most Important (Genesis 1:1) then 2) Really Important (Genesis 3) and finally 3) Important (Genesis 1:2-2:25).