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Lord's Prayer

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

Prayer of Thanks for God's Creation

O Lord God of Israel and God of the nations, you are the only God in heaven above or the earth below. I walk before you with all my heart. I bless your name in the morning when I rise and in the evening when I sleep, and all the day when your creation fills my eye. Bless me to remember you this day. When I see and hear the thousand miracles of your creation, let me see them anew, recalling that you have made them, and no other; that I may live in your presence among the common miracles I take for granted. Through Christ I pray,

Prayer for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit

Christ Jesus, before ascending into heaven, You promised to send the Holy Spirit to Your apostles and disciples. Grant that the same Spirit may perfect in my life the work of Your grace and love. and that I may bear my cross with You and, with courage, overcome the obstacles that interfere with my salvation; Teach me to be Your faithful disciple and animate me in every way with Your Spirit.

Prayer of Surrender

All to Jesus, I surrender
All to Him I freely give
I will ever love and trust Him
In His presence daily live.

Blessing

The Lord bless us and keep us. The Lord make his face to shine upon us, and be gracious unto us. The Lord lift up his countenance upon us, and give us peace, this day and evermore.

Think of the day ahead in terms of God with you, and visualize health, strength, guidance, purity, calm confidence, and victory as the gifts of His presence.

Proverbs 14:5

Genesis 1:26-31

The Creation of the World [4] - Man

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth."

And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Notes on the Scripture

We discussed the often very-heated debate over evolution vs. creationism yesterday. God is the master of time, not its servant as we are. If He wanted to call the period during which he created man a "day", it does not mean 24 hours as we perceive it. Nor does today's passage tell us precise how He created us. Think of evolution as evidence God left for us about how He accomplished his creation, for neither time nor the method of God's creation has any importance in spiritual terms.

What is important is the phrase, "Let us make man in our image". First, God caused us to exist. We are not an accident. An evolutionist might claim this, but here, he is not being a scientist, but just another atheist stating an unproven opinion. The evolution of species occurred because it was God's will that it occur, and He knew that mankind would result from it.

Second, we are like God. We were made in his image. But how? We do not have infinite power or knowledge. We do, however, have two attributes that no other creature on earth has: self-consciousness and spirit. We know we exist, and even more important, we know that we have existence outside the realm of what we can see; and if we have been baptized, God's spirit lives within us. And we know that our spirit will survive the death of our body.

The Bible does not say that this is what Genesis means by the term "after our likeness", but we infer it, because these are attributes we know we have that no other life form shares.

The passage is full of other information. First, both men and women are made equally in the likeness of God. The term "man" in Genesis refers to men and women collectively, just as it has traditionally been used in English. There is some differentiation between the genders in the Bible, just as there is in life, but at the most basic level of holiness, gender is meaningless. God created us in his image, and made us male and female.

Secondly, it is interesting that He made us vegetarians initially. Adam and Eve ate no meat. This changes only after the great flood, when God tells Noah, "Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you." (Genesis 9:1-4)

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