The Most Important Piece of Art

I read the most beautiful piece of art describing creation itself. I had to share it with you.

The scene begins in darkness,

Darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over waters. (Gen. 1:2)

The breathless moment in the dark before the first notes of concert, a play, or an epic film. All is formless, empty, dark. Then a voice speaks.

“Let there be light.” (Gen. 1:3)

And suddenly, there is light, pure magnificent light. It’s radiance will enable us to see now what is unfolding. The voice speaks again, and again.

“Let there be a vault in the midst of the waters, and let it divide water from water.” (Gen. 1:6)

“Let the waters under the heavens be gathered in one place so that the dry land will appear.” (Gen. 1:9)

Creation in its early stages begins like any great work of art –with uncut stone or a mass of clay, a rough sketch, a blank sheet of music. “Formless and empty” as Genesis 1:2 has it. Then God begins to fashion raw materials he has made, like an artist working with the stone or sketch or page before him. Light and dark, heaven and earth, land and sea –it’s beginning to take shape. With passion and brilliance the Creator works in large, sweeping movements on a grand scale. Great realms are distinguished from one another and established. Then he moves back over them again for a second pass as he begins to fill in color, detail, and finer lines.

“Let the earth grow grass, plants…and trees bearing fruit…” (Gen. 1:11)

“Let there be lights in the vault of the heavens…” (Gen. 1:14)

“Let the waters swarm with the swarm of living creatures and let fowl fly over the earth.” (Gen. 1:20)

Forest and meadows burst forth. Tulips and pine trees and moss covered stones. And notice—the masterpiece is becoming more intricate, more intimate. He fills the night sky with a thousand million stars, and he names them, sets them in constellations. Into our world God opens his hand and animals spring forth. Myriads of birds, in every shape and size and song, take wing—hawks, herons, pelicans. All the creatures of the sea leap into it—whales, dolphins, fish of a thousand colors and designs. Horses, gazelles, buffalo thunder across the plains, running like the wind. It is more astonishing than we could possibly imagine.

From water and stone, to pomegranate and rose, to leopard and nightingale, creation ascends in beauty. The plot is thickening; the symphony is building and swelling, higher and higher to a crescendo. No wonder, “the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). A great hurrah goes up from the heavens. The greatest of all masterpieces is emerging. What was once formless and empty is now overflowing with life and color and sound and movement in a thousand variations. Most importantly, notice that each creature is MORE intricate and noble and mysterious than the last. A cricket is amazing, but cannot compare to a wild horse.

Then something truly astonishing takes place.

God sets his own image in the earth. He creates a being like himself. He creates a son.

The Lord formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. (Gen. 2:7)

It is nearing the end of the sixth day, the end of the Creator’s great labor, as Adam steps forth, the image of God, the triumph of his work. He alone is pronounced the Son of God. Nothing in creation even comes close. Picture Michelangelo’s “David”. He is…magnificent. Truly, the masterpiece seems complete. And yet, the Master says the something is not good, not right. Something is missing…and that something is Eve.

And the Lord God cast a deep slumber on the human, and he slept, and He took one of his ribs and closed over the flesh where it had been, and the Lord God built the rib He had taken from the human into a woman and He brought he to the human. (Gen. 2:21-23)

She is the crescendo, the final, astonishing work of God. Woman. In one last flourish creation comes to finish not with Adam, but with Eve. She is the Master’s finishing touch. How we wish this were an illustrated book, and we could show you now some painting or sculpture of the goddess Nike of Samothrace, the winged beauty, just alighting on the prow of a great ship, her beautiful form revealed through the thin veils that sweep around her. Eve is…breathtaking.

Given the way creation unfolds how it builds to ever higher and higher works of art, can there be any doubt that Eve is the crown of creation? Not an afterthought. Not a nice addition like an ornament on a tree. She is God’s final touch, his piece de resistance. She fills a place in the world nothing and no one else can fill. Step to a window. Better yet, find some place with a view. Look out across the earth and say to yourself, “The whole, vast world is incomplete without me. Creation reached its zenith in me.”