"Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lately it's been on my heart that I need to read the bible more. I need to start digging again into God's word to keep myself focused on His love for us. Today I decided to finally do something about it. I went to the all-answering Google and found a website with a bible reading plan. I'm hoping that this time I will stay motivated and dedicated enough to keep with it through an entire year. The reading plan I chose was to read the bible chronologically through. I've always liked history and could remember things in the order they happened, but when it came to the bible, the order always baffled me. So here I am going to try and go through the bible in the order that things happened. Maybe God will open my eyes to seeing new connections to how things played out.
Now that I started this reading, I decided to make a word document with notes on it from what I read. Just jot down notes and what not to help me grasp what I'm reading. I am also reading it outloud to myself. With these methods I'm hoping that I will be able to catch things I never did before.
I want to share some of the thoughts that I have during this whole process for myself to write down and for just letting others see how I think. Well those who take time to read this blog.
I was reading through Genesis chapters 1-3 today. It is all about the beginning. The beginning for everything. Now as I was reading through the 6 days that God used to create the world and everything it contains, I was building it in my mind step by step. It finally hit me on like day 5 that I finally figured out what this reminded me of and it all made clearer sense. So I'm a visual person if you didn't know. I like to see pictures, create pictures in my head and love hearing details so I can form pictures in my head while reading/listening to stories. As I was reading I was picturing someone putting together the earth, but not necessarily how others would see it. I would assume, though it might not be accurate, that when other people think to the creation of the world by God, they see it in 3 dimensional. I read it 2 dimensional. Let me explain.
The whole creation set up, to me, seems like a painting to me. I was watching Bob Ross, the Detroit Public TV painter with the afro, paint a picture of mountains. During this he painted from the background forward ending with the small bushes and pathway and the bottom edge of the canvas. This technique of starting with the background moving to the foreground is what I believe God was doing. The first few days He started with light and darkness deciding what canvas' he will be using for his masterpiece. They were followed by the creation of sky, sea, and finishing up with forming the land. That made a solid ground for a backdrop to start adding the details in. After the land was set up, God decided the vegetation would be good to add in. He made trees and plants all with seeds and fruit for it to continually grow through time. This was his middle ground. Next God added in his animals of all sorts. Fish, birds, livestock and wild animals all were added. He then added Adam to the picture. Built him from the ground and breathed life into him. You know there is a point that a painting looks good, but you don't feel done with it yet. This was the point for God. Adam needed someone there to balance him out, and Eve was created finishing God's masterpiece.
I can't be sure if that was God's intention for the process of how He created things, or if it was something that He opened my eyes to see today, but I like it and it puts into perspective how much work God did. I know to create a masterpiece painting takes a lot of work, time, dedication and patience. It doesn't come all at once. You have to keep tweaking it till the point you think that one more brushstroke will ruin it.
