Day 1: Genesis 1:26–2:3

God saw all that He had made, and it was very good (v. 31a).

Can you imagine the fellowship of the Trinity on the seventh day? As they rested and looked upon the very good work they had accomplished, one planet had been tended like no other to our knowledge. Perfectly placed in the universe with adequate distance from sun, moon, and stars to sustain human life, it was chosen for divine infiltration.

“For God loved the world.” Scripture doesn’t tell us He loved the sun, the most impressive of the heavenly bodies we can see. Nor are we told that He loved the stars, even though He knows every one of them by name. John goes out of his way, however, to tell us that God loved the world.

In a universe so vast, so incomprehensible, why does God single out one little planet to love? Beloved, absorb this into the marrow of your bones: because we are on it. As despicable as humanity can be, God loves us. Inconceivably, we are His treasures, His prize creation. He can’t help it. He just loves us. So much, in fact, that He did something I, with my comparatively pitiful love for my children, would not do for anyone. He “gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 hcsb).

Dear one, let it fall afresh. I myself am overcome with emotion. Elohim is so huge; we are so small. Yet the vastness of His love—so high, so wide, so deep, so long—envelops us like the endless universe envelops a crude little planet God first called Earth.

My Amanda was one of the dreamiest, most tenderhearted toddlers you can imagine. I often stooped down to talk to her so I could look her right in those big blue-green eyes. Every time I squatted down to talk to her, she squatted down, too . . . and there we’d be. The gesture was so precious I always had to fight the urge to laugh. I dared not, because she was often very serious about those contemplative moments between the two of us.

Of his God, the psalmist wrote, “Your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great” (Ps. 18:35). The Amplified Version says it this way: “Your gentleness and condescension have made me great.” I don’t think the Scripture applies to us in the modern world’s terms of greatness. I think it says of us, “You stoop down and make me significant.” Yes, indeed. And when the God of all the universe stoops down and a single child recognizes the tender condescension and bends her knee to stoop as well, the heart of God surges with unbridled emotion. And there they are. Just the two of them.