Posted by Roberta Grimes • January 17, 2026 • 0 Comment
The Source, Understanding Reality
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.
Holy, holy, holy! all the saints adore thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea.
Cherubim and seraphim, falling down before thee,
Who was and is and evermore shall be.
Holy, holy, holy! though the darkness hide thee,
Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
Only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
Perfect in pow’r, in love, and purity.
– Reginald Heber (1783-1826), from “Holy, Holy, Holy” (1826)
In the Beginning…
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and He 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.
6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters He called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.
24 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. 25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created mankind in His own image,
in the image of God He created them;
male and female He created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
31 God saw all that He had made, and it was very good! And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Thus, the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
2 By the seventh day, God had finished the work He had been doing; so, on the seventh day He rested from all His work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done (Gen 1:1-31;2:1-3).
So, God created this material reality in six epochs that we might measure as days, although they might just as well be seen to be six long eons of time, in a reality in which time is both flexible and highly subjective. We have very much later come to understand that Consciousness is itself the living God, and Consciousness actually is all that there is. So, God created this beautiful material reality for humankind to inhabit within the Consciousness that is God, and it is all that exists… And God saw then that this starter material reality that God had just created was very good, indeed. There is a second, somewhat different phrasing of the creation story that comes in the Book of Genesis right after this one, but I much prefer to read this one. Its simple and literal telling of the story, and with God at once reviewing each day’s or each eon’s effort, and then pronouncing with satisfaction that “It was Good”; and saying at the last, that “It was very Good,” feels highly satisfying to me! I read it again, and again I see it as the start of the long process by which God lovingly created this whole material reality.
How does materialist science assume that creation happened? Well, in a “Big Bang” some 13.8 billion earth-years ago. And that materialist Big Bang theory, which is seen by fewer and fewer scientists to be, let’s be frank, at all a satisfactory explanation, is based upon what are seen to have been the very long-ago likely conditions of the very early pre-univrse reality. But in fact, it solves nothing much at all, wouldn’t you say? Because no matter where you choose to begin that materialist theory’s creation of the universe, someone can always quite reasonably ask you, “Okay, but what came before that happened?” And of course, the perfectly ordered universe that then developed after the Big Bang, nicely set up within its tiny tolerances of space and time, and always making perfect sense, really should make no sense at all, without a Creator in place to design and order every micro-step of its later development along the way. And yet, of course, this universe has continued to develop ideally, and to always work out perfectly, without any Creator’s guiding hand at all… or so they imagine. And so they try to tell us.
The material reality that developed under God’s control during the eons that followed the Genesis story, that clear beginning, and continuing right up until the twentieth century, always of course has made perfect sense, with God patiently there to design and to control its clear ongoing development. It began as that bit of flat plain surrounded by that bit of ocean under that bit of necessary sky, because at first that was all that humankind needed to see; and then, over time, over centuries and then over millennia, we needed more and more African plains to explore, and more oceans, and then eventually this entire planet to which we could eventually stake our various human claims. We needed those farther and ever more distant stars to see, and eventually an ever more complete universe of stars, and so on and on. And as we have needed more reality, so God has given us more reality… right up until the early part of the twentieth century.
I recall devouring old science magazines in my college’s library, and there coming across a weird old article by a research astronomer. How I wish that I had copied that article! Now, this was in the Sixties, mind you, but this article could have been a few decades older. The astronomer who wrote it told his readers back then that there still were many patches of sky that were entirely devoid of stars, but he had discovered that if you focused a telescope on one specific point in the universe where there were no stars at all, where it was possible to photograph an absolutely dead-black square, and then you came back a year later and looked at precisely that same point again, through your telescope, you would find that now that spot in the universe which had been empty just a year ago was literally teeming with stars. And from now on, that spot would always stay that way! He said that he had tried this experiment a number of times with empty black spaces, and it always happened just this way. He thought that if you wanted to spend your career doing this, you could likely find all the remaining blank spots in the universe, and personally fill them all with stars.
Well, wow. I think of that long-ago astronomer now, as I better understand how God works with humankind to complete God’s creation, and the thought fills me with such delight! Now I think of that fellow as one of God’s final collaborators, still working in the twentieth century to finish the job of creating this universe as our spiritual learning-place that God began to lovingly make for us so long ago, with the general process described for us in the Biblical Book of Genesis.
All those who continue to insist that they don’t believe in a loving Creator God are just kidding themselves.Because, to be frank, the odds are unfathomably long against this material universe simply holding itself together and remaining stable for even one more day; but that doesn’t matter to us at all, because God believes in you and me, and God’s loves us perfectly, and God’s love is far more than enough to keep this material universe forevermore rock-solid and stable. As even today’s materialist scientists are at last beginning to understand. So, be of good cheer, my dear ones! It may turn out that nothing in materialist science is as the scientists long have imagined it to be, but that doesn’t matter to us at all. Because we are ever better learning now that God has in fact been patiently right here with us, and has been deeply loving us, all along.
Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.
– Reginald Heber (1783-1826), from “Holy, Holy, Holy” (1826)
(Many photos are from Vecteezy.com)
