Genesis 1:3-5 • Day 1 • Light

Gen 1:3-5 → 3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

• This section is the first "day" of creation. I guess there is some controversy over whether it is a literal 24 hour day, or if this metaphorically represents eons or eras or whatever, but the description in the verses seems to be indicating one normal 24-hour period.

• Remember in verse 2 it talked about "darkness" being over the whole earth. We also talked about darkness, not being a shade of light, but rather the total lack of light.

• Now God starts the molding process of His creation by creating light. Now I'm curious, what is the source of this light?

• In verse 4 God declares the light to be "good". We'll actually see this repeated throughout the creation process. Then we also see that "God separated the light from the darkness." How did He do that? Did He put all the light in one box and all the darkness in another?

• In verse 5 we see the separation was actually something we take for granted. Light is day; dark is night. The verse goes on to say "And there was evening and there was morning, one day." So there you have it - the separation is night and day.

• So I have some questions and some speculations...

→ ??? What is the source of the light? I asked this a little earlier. I don't have and answer, but if God is the source of the light, and He is everywhere, how could there be ANY darkness?

→ ??? If the source of the light is a single point, which would allow for the earth to be partly in darkness and partly in light, what is the source? The implication being that the earth is spinning. In fact, the earth would have to be spinning or none of that water we talked about in verse 2 would stay on the planet!

► speculation - I don't want to get ahead of myself, but God doesn't create what we experience as the sources of light (sun, moon, stars) until day 4. I'm not a scientist, and a couple of people smarter than me have tried to explain the theory of relativity and it's impacts on time to me (over my head), but my simple understanding of the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) is that it takes a while for light from a star to get to earth.

↑ the light from our sun takes 8-1/3 minutes.

↑ the light from the next nearest star, Proxima Centauri takes 4.24 years to get to us.

↑ the light from Betelgeuse, which is supposed to go supernova sometime in the future, takes 642 years to reach us.

So Adam, created on the 6th day, would not have been able to see anything in the sky except the sun and the moon for over 4 years before the stars would start to make themselves know. Unless... What if God put the light of the stars in place, BEFORE He created the actual stars?

• However God did it, the important thing to note is that He did. All of our human experience, no matter where or when, is controlled by the never ending cycle of day and night, light and dark, over, and over, and over again, clear back to the beginning of time. And the assumption being that it will continue until the end of time, whenever that is. Each day is like an episode in a TV show. Every day is like a complete unit. To be restarted at every sunrise. The questions I ponder on are "What will this day hold? What will I do with this day? What experiences in this day will reveal God to me? What choices will I make in this day to seek God?"

Photo → 1/1/2025 • Sunrise near Claremore, OK