This post went live on Tuesday, 2/22/2022 at 2:22 am EST. In light of this fun date alignment, I thought I’d share a few thoughts.
In Genesis 1, God creates the world in six days, resting on the seventh (Sabbath). The flow of each day is mostly the same. First, God speaks order into the chaos, and things come into existence. Then, God calls what he made good, and time progresses.
Creation in Pairs
However, a careful reading reveals a more nuanced and complex structure. Reality starts formless and empty. To fix this, God creates in two sets of three days. In the first three days, God forms the universe: separating light from darkness, sky from water, and water from land with plants. Likewise, in the second set of three days, God fills the empty darkness with lights, the empty sky and water with birds and fish, and the empty land with animals and people.
For each of these things God makes, you’d assume God always declares it “good”, but that pattern varies subtly. On Sunday (day one), the light God makes is good, but on Monday (day two), the separated waters are not called “good”. Why? Does God not like Mondays? To the ancients, the sea and sky dome (waters below and waters above) represented primordial chaos. Compare this to Noah’s flood where God undoes creation, reverting the world to watery chaos.
The Third Day
To compensate for the lack of “good” on day two, the third day (Tuesday) has two declarations of “good”: on land and vegetation. Plants are the capstone of God giving the world form. Similarly, on the second third day (day six or Friday) there are two blessings: over the “good” animals and the “very good” humans. People, made in the image of God, are the capstone of God filling the universe.
Throughout the Bible, God often is doing something special on the “third day”. On the “third day”, God provided a substitution for Abraham and Isaac on the altar (Genesis 22:4-5). On the “third day”, God showed up at Sinai (Exodus 19:10-11). And on the “third day”, Jesus was raised to life (Luke 24:46). In doing so, Jesus blessed us twice: he not only paid for the chaos of our sin; he gave us his righteousness to transform us into new creations.
God has the power not only to form beauty out of the chaos of reality; he has the power to fill you resurrection life in his name. May you have a doubly blessed “two’s day” today!
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
1 Corinthians 15:3-4