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Reflections For Lent 2026 Part One: Creation

Reflections For Lent 2026 Part One: Creation

Last updated on: February 22, 2026 at 2:52 am by Henry Karlson

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Reflections For Lent 2026 Part One: Creation 2026-02-22T02:52:51-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Ted: Icon — Creation of the Cosmos / flickr

Everything begins with God: God is “in the beginning” which is without end, that is, in the eternal now, the archē from which all things come. In this archē is God, God with God, and God proceeding from God through God to God. God is all in all, including in God’s own-self. God is love, making love itself eternal. But how can God be love? By way of the Trinity, with the persons of the Trinity loving each other; in their mutual love for one another they find their unity with each other, their oneness, affirmed. Conventionally, we can discuss the Trinity in the following way: the “origin” of the Trinity, God the “Father,” gives birth (like a Mother) to the “Son,” and the “Father” and “Son” love each other with a love which is so great, it is personal, revealing to us the person of the “Holy Spirit.” Thus, in the eternal beginning, God acted, God acts, and God will continue to act without end, and in that activity, all three persons are not other than God; the persons are all one, who, in their radical oneness, create all things which come to be:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day (Gen. 1:1-5 RSV).

Each of the creation stories in Scripture (as there are more than one), present to us a few dogmatic facts, but they do so, not by giving us a literal history or a scientific analysis of creation, but in the way expected by its original audience, that is, through means of myth and legend. Saying this, that they are mythic, is not meant to say that the stories are false, but what it means is that the ancients presented truths different from the way modern humanity does with positive history or science (or philosophy). There is much which could and should interest us in those stories, realizing that their authors took in elements of history and used them to create rich myths full with symbolism. To interpret those myths, we should look for the symbols and understand their intended and potential meanings, even as we should seek to understand the point of the stories themselves, that is, what is being revealed in them (and also what is not). We can do this in great depth, or briefly, but, due to our intentions here, it will have to be in brief. We will not be able to go into great depth with reflections and explanations for the the symbols, because there are many different and complementary meanings which can be obtained from them. Instead, our interest here is to look for the most basic truths which can he obtained by our reading of Scripture. Here, this means: God made all things, spiritual and physical, invisible and visible, that is, “the heavens and the earth,” and in the process of creation, the temporal order was itself established (as indicated by the text when it said that “there was evening and there was morning, one day”).

Because the story tells us God created time itself simultaneously with the rest of creation, we should realize that creation, the act of creation, precedes history and time, as it is in God’s eternal now. This means, it is not really a part of history, and so we should not read it as history. Nonetheless, due to the nature of storytelling, we find the act of creation itself presented in a temporal fashion (that is, God’s act of creation is broken down into a few day). For God, there is no time, and so no time is needed to establish the different parts of creation. In the temporal order, those parts seem to emerge on different days; in Genesis, we see they come to be over a few days, while scientifically, we see that happening through great amounts of time, indeed, in a way which continues to this day. We should, therefore, not assume the days of creation represent literal days; if we want to talk about the process of creation, the earth was not brought to be in one day, but rather, in a process which took billions of years. We should not be upset with this, because, again, Genesis is not giving us a scientific discussion, and so it does not have to give us literal history. The writers behind the Genesis accounts did not know what we have learned, nor did they need to in order give us what they knew and were inspired to tell us, that is, there is a God, and all things which came to be, were established by God.

While Genesis speaks of the way God, as one, creates everything, forming the heavens and the earth, each person of the Trinity engages that one eternal act in their own unique way. The New Testament specifically tells us in the way it explores how the Logos, the Word of God, was involved in the act of creation:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made (Jn. 1:1-3 RSV).

The Word, or Logos of God, God who comes out of or is begotten of God, “is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation” (Col. 1:15 RSV), and in this way is described as the “Son of God.” The begetting of the Son is an eternal begetting, which is why the Logos can truly be said to be with the Father in the beginning, before all things were made, because the Son is with the Father in eternity, outside of time. Being in the image of the Father, the Word truly is the Word of God, the Logos which reflects who and what the Father is, forming the way we identify the person of the Son. It is in that Logos, and through that Logos, God “speaks” creation, and all things are made, given everyone their own reason or ground of being. That is, everyone comes out from the Logos, and in the act of creation, the Logos gives all that comes to be, its stamp, its own logos; in this way, everything is a logos in the Logos, as all things have in them reflection of the Logos, the Logos who is God. This is one of the ways everything can be said to be made in the image of God. As everything has a way in which it reflects God, there is a way to see God in all things. Thus, we should seek to discern the image and God in all things and honor it; even if we cannot, we should understand it is there, and thanks to that understanding, honor it, knowing when we do so, we are honoring God.

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N.B.: While I read comments to moderate them, I rarely respond to them. If I don’t respond to your comment directly, don’t assume I am unthankful for it. I appreciate it. But I want readers to feel free to ask questions, and hopefully, dialogue with each other. I have shared what I wanted to say, though some responses will get a brief reply by me, or, if I find it interesting and something I can engage fully, as the foundation for another post. I have had many posts inspired or improved upon thanks to my readers.

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