Episode Details

Prayer

Heavenly Father, I thank you for the new day that you have given to me. All praise to you, my Lord and my God. Truly God I good to Israel! To those who fear his name. Lord, you have lifted my life up from the grave, you have set my feet on a rock. You have trained my hands for war and I praise you. I thank you for new strength, and your sustaining grace. I praise you that your steadfast love never ceases, and that your mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Please bless your word to me now, as I come to seek your face. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Reading

Psalm 27 & 1 Timothy 6.

Genesis 1:2-5.

“The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

Meditation

Having laid the foundation of the light on day one in our previous meditation, there’s more that we need to say about the significance of the light on day one. For not only do we see that God is light in scripture, but secondly we see that light represents God’s presence. Light in God’s word is a symbol and revelation of God’s presence and glory. The scriptures, in building on the foundation of day one, make this clear – and certainly the Israelites in Moses’ day, his original audience, would have made this connection. At the mention of light, they would have been thinking about Moses’ face shining with light after he’d been in the presence of God (Ex 34:29-30). More importantly, they would have thought about the Tabernacle, which represented the presence of God in the camp of Israel. The Tabernacle was the place where God met with his people, it was the earthly manifestation of his presence. Inside the Tabernacle, one of the chief features that we find is the lampstand with seven lights constantly burning. Every Israelite would thus associate light with the presence of God, and perhaps the seven lights of the Tabernacle would have served as a reminder of the seven days of creation. Just as God dwells in the light of the Tabernacle, then, so too he announced that creation itself would be his dwelling place when he said: “Let there be light.” Creation was to be a place where his presence would be manifested, for light represents God’s presence. God dwells in unapproachable light, after all, as Paul tells Timothy.

To further emphasise and establish this, the rest of scripture continues to use light in the same kind of way. The Psalms are particularly rich with this creation-light imagery. Psalm 27:1, for example, says: “The LORD is my light and my salvation”. In Psalm 56:13 we read: “For you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.” The psalmist here represents walking in the presence of God as walking in the light of life. Psalm 90:9 is even more explicit: “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.” Interestingly, Psalm 90 is the only psalm written by Moses, and so it’s no surprise then to find creation light imagery used here. In Daniel 2:22 we read that “Light dwells with him”, and 1 Timothy 6:16 affirms that he dwells in “unapproachable light.” Light represents God’s dwelling place, and so when God says “Let there be light”, he’s showing that his intention for his creation is to dwell in it, shining out and manifesting his glory and presence.

So, why do you exist? According to day one of creation, we may say clearly and confidently that there is one central and basic answer to this question: You exist to dwe