Genesis 1:9-13 • Day 3 • Dry land & plants

Gen 1:9-13 → 9Then God said, “Let the waters below the heavens be gathered into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. 10God called the dry land earth, and the gathering of the waters He called seas; and God saw that it was good. 11Then God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit after their kind with seed in them”; and it was so. 12The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit with seed in them, after their kind; and God saw that it was good. 13There was evening and there was morning, a third day.

• 3rd day of creation - and this one's a twofer. What I mean by that, is that of the six days, God says "it was good" on each of the days. But on day 3 and day 6 He says it twice on those two days.

• So what's the 1st part of this day? God causes the dry land, which He calls earth, to appear out of the waters. This seems simple enough, but if you think about the significance of the movement of the land, I'm not sure you'd survive the earthquake! So all the mountains suddenly appear, the Sierras in California, the Rockies in Colorado, the Alps in Europe, the Himalayas north of India. Can you imagine the shaking going on while Mt. Everest is being pushed up?

• And keep this in mind... Assuming the orb we call earth was smooth (by this I mean the same elevation over the entire planet - I almost said flat, but that would have entertained an entirely different conversation) when it was totally covered by water, while the mountains are being pushed up, are the ocean floors also being carved out? One would have to assume that most of this reimaging of the planet, at least on the scale that it's happening on this day, would have to be complete (by an overall global standard) before there were any animals or mankind, because I'm not sure if any of those animals would have survived the immensity of the earthquakes that were probably involved.

• And part 2 of this day, also called "good" is where God then plants all the vegetation on the planet.

• What a busy day! I hope God got paid overtime!

• Again, I have no problems with this happening in a normal 24 hour day. If God is really big enough to create it all, why do we think He couldn't do it in a day?

• I know a lot of the conversation with scientists will involved the layering of the earth, and it makes sense that from our human understanding that the process for creating the mountains would have had to involved multiple layers upon layers of different kinds of geological activity - volcanism, earthquakes caused by tectonic plate movements, flooding, glaciation, etc., but I have no problem with God doing all of that in a day. Keep in mind that He didn't have to physically mold it - He just spoke and it was.

• I've often wondered if the first trees had rings. Why couldn't they have? The mountains can have layers from day one.

• All of this to say - if it really happened the way the Bible records it, then we should pay attention to everything else the Creator is saying to us. His ultimate desire is for us to know Him, and it was through the creation that I first began to ponder that there just might be something bigger than me in the universe. I wrestled with that for quite some time - until I opened my first Bible. Then I got my answers!

Photo → 6/16/2023 • McWay Falls, Big Sur, California