 I believe that everything that we see, and touch, and smell, and taste and hear can in some way testify to the creative design that God employed during the first six days of creation. This is where all that we know and understand and comprehend as humans had its beginning. And though the focus of this blog is the guitar and what it can teach us about God, obviously the guitar itself was not created during those first six days, but certainly all of the elements that are needed to make a guitar a guitar were. So it seems fair to take a few moments to think about the elements that God created. And to do that, we need to start at the beginning!
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and empty, and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters." (Gen 1:1-31)
So it was, at the very nexus of space and time that we see God approach the vast wasteland of nothingness and He examined that which was not, and it displeased Him, for waste has no place in His presence. So He joyfully exercised His creative force upon that which was not, and like a master painter He began to paint upon the canvas of nothingness, and from those broad strokes of creativity creation began to form.
With lively and artistic brush strokes He created rainbows of glorious light. And with fluid brush strokes He created the life giving waters. And with steady brush strokes He created the solid and stable terrafirma. It was through this demiurgic process that He established the basis for life. Something out of nothing. Light out of darkness. Fullness out of waste.
Then dabbing His brush onto His infinite pallet He painted in the nourishing strokes of the green grass and the varied fruit and the herbs. With a calculated and scientific stroke He painted in the vast universe, blew on it to set it into motion, then wound it up like an alarm clock, so that it may govern the life He had created until the alarm would sound and the time of its end be fulfilled.
After these things He set aside His broad brushes and took in hand His medium brushes and began to paint upon the back drop of His "Maximus Consilium" the more particular elements of creation. He painted in the great sea monsters and the fowl of the air that sprang forth from within and above the waters. And from the land He painted in the cattle and the beasts and everything that lives upon the soil.
Then, upon His grande painting of creation He did something peculiar. He painted in a self portrait in the person of Adam, as a representative of God within the canvas of creation. And being in His image and in His likeness He painted within Adam that which no other element of creation had been painted with, the ability to walk with God, to reason with Him, and to understand at least in part, the hand that painted this grande design.
But God was not finished with Adam. Taking in hand the finest brushes, God focused His brush stroke upon the heart and mind of Adam and was pleased to reveal in him who was created in His image, things that the fowl of the air and the beasts of the fields could never understand. He painted in Adam a soul, a spirit, a conscience and a will. And in doing so He gave the ability of the painted to commune and converse and communicate with the painter. For this was a living and breathing painting, painted upon the canvas of life.
And so through the first part of Genesis, we see God's grande design for His creation and for mankind. But it must also be understood that there was more to this painting than the final product might easily reveal at a simple glance. When God created the light and the waters and the land and the Heavens and the soil of the earth, we must understand that His creative force was not limited to that which was recorded. For certainly within the six days of creation, God must have created mathematics, and He must have created gravity and He must have created the basis for chemistry and the sciences, and logic.
Logic then, would also suggest that if He created light it would make sense He created in man eyes to see the light. And if He created stone and moss, each with its own unique texture, then it makes sense He created in man sensory perceptors to understand the stone and moss through touch. And if He created in man ears to hear, it is reasonable to believe that He must have created sound. So often overlooked in the grandeur of all creation, but what would life be like without sound?
Can you imagine God standing at the precipice of space and time, holding a thousand burning suns in His hands, laughing mightily as He flung them into the outer reaches of the wastelands to bring light and order to the darkness? Though our eyes would have instantaneously focused their attention on this great spectacle, would not our ears have been overwhelmed by a roaring thunderous explosion of sound as those suns exploded across the galaxies to the resting places God had ordained?
Alternatively, what a joy it would have been for Adam to hear the quiet rustling of the fern and the shrub as God walked through His garden, knowing that He was ever near him. And what wonder and curiosity would have been invoked in Adam as he sat in the perfectness of creation and listened intently to the skylark and whipporwhill, to the lion and the coyote. To the sound of the wind as it meandered through the evergreens. And eventually to the sound a guitar would make as the strings are plucked to bring forth a pleasing melody.
There is even a sound that is made when there is no sound. It is a special sound that is made when all is quiet. For in it is the stillness that sets the table for man to contemplate the spirit and the soul. What a shame if God had not created sound, and man could not hear Gods creation whispering and speaking and shouting to him through all his senses... and his soul.
Yes, there is light, there is sight, there is hearing and there is sound. All created out of the wastelands of nothingness and made into something wonderous and beautiful and which testify of Gods magnificence!
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