God's Work Mirrors His Character
Genesis 1:8
The Bible presents for us two occasions where God is spoken of as "working". Of course, the first is here in Genesis when God did the work of Creation. This is the work that Hebrews tells us from which He "rested" on the seventh day. It is a truly grand and marvelous work, a work that none other could do. The creation, as He created it, shares many of His so-called aesthetic or "appreciate-able" attributes. It is good, complete, mature, peaceful, and beautiful; quite idyllic actually. Further, it gave evidence of God's great wisdom, His intellect, His power, and showed many, many marks of His personal presence during and after creation.
Let's take a brief look at how creation reflects these grand attributes of God for us. God looked at each act of creation and pronounced it "good". As we have discussed what "good" can mean, we will not do so again here. The creation was complete in that it was finished and not left in a state of incompleteness. There was nothing left to be done to make the creation all that it could be. Creation saw its greatest day the moment that God finished with it. It was at its zenith from then until the time that Adam fell and he and Eve were cast out of the Garden of God. the world is not a "fixer-upper" - there is nothing needful to make it more hospitable or less inhospitable. God created, and it was completed by the sixth day.
Further, God's creation was mature. There is no hint that God created anything but fully mature things. It is not reasonable to believe that God created a relatively flat earth and used volcanoes or other natural disturbances to create mountains. It seems entirely reasonable to understand that God created vegetation fully mature and ready to function, providing air and nourishment to the creatures He later put in place. It is, in this writer's opinion, most reasonable to see that He created Adam as a full-grown man, not requiring the normal growth process. He created the light in place and did not require the creation to wait for the requisite time for it to reach us from the sun. God's creation was mature, not immature.
There is every reason to believe that God has a sense of beauty. That He has an aesthetic capacity. Really, that is kind of backwards. We have this capability and know what it is because it mirrors Gods! God's creation was peaceful and beautiful. It was not at war with itself. The animals didn't struggle with one another and there was no carnivorous animals or beings present. All of that is the result of the fall in one way or another. What God created was an ideal environment, as purely an idyllic setting as has ever been. Nothing was out of place and nothing worked at odds with anything else.
Of course the very fact of creation evidences God's great power, and the design of creation speaks of God's wisdom and intellect. In fact, Paul uses that very argument when arguing in Romans 1 for the universal culpability of man by saying that the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament show forth His handiwork! Further, the excellence with which the world has been made argue strongly for a personal presence and touch by the Creator Himself, not some automated and impersonal process that resulted in what Adam saw, and what we see the remnants of.
God's creation declares His character! That is how the heavens declare the glory of God! That is precisely haw the firmament shows forth His handiwork! Glory to God!
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