| GENESIS |
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| drama, with creatures so real they seemed to breathe. Never before or since have paint and plaster been so changed. The Miracle of Life But, as Michelangelo knew very well, his work was a poor, dim image of what God had created. Over the plaster vault of the Sistine Chapel rose the immense dome of God's sky, breathtaking in its simple beauty. Mountains, seas, the continents - all these, and much more, are the creative work of God, the master artist. God's world, so much bigger and more beautiful than Michelangelo's masterpiece, is the product of incomparably greater energy. As Eugene Peterson has written, "The Bible begins with the announcement, 'In the beginning God created' not 'sat majestic in the heavens,' and not 'was filled with beauty and love.' He created. He did something." In the beginning, God went to work. Genesis focuses attention on this creative, hard-working God. The word God appears 30 times in the 31 verses of chapter 1. He grabs our attention in action. Genesis is an account of his deeds, ringing splendidly with the magnificent effort of creation. Mending Broken Pieces Genesis also talks about the work of humankind - but the tone changes abruptly. God had barely finished creating the universe when human rebellion marred it, like a delinquent spraying graffiti on the Sistine Chapel. Chapters 3-11 of Genesis portray a series of disasters: Adam and Eve's rebellion, Cain's calculated murder of his brother, the worldwide wickedness leading to the great flood, and human arrogance at Babel. God immediately began to mend the pieces his creatures had broken. He narrowed his scope from the whole universe to a |