Day 4 of Creation: God's Love Illuminates Us All Like the Sun

Scripture

Genesis 1:14-19

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.

Day 4 of Creation: God's Love Illuminates Us All Like the Sun

by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts

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The Swedish scientist turned mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, wrote more than 250 years ago that through his experiences in the spiritual world he was shown how the symbols in scripture interconnect and describe the process of spiritual awakening. We can see this for ourselves when we start to remember and cross-connect the consistent symbols in scripture and how we are told to think about them spiritually in those scriptures (for example, light means understanding and a fruiting plant means spiritual fruition and life). Day four of the creation story continues our exploration of how this type of inner meaning shines through Genesis 1 and as we'll see, it marks a major milestone in our personal "seven-day" journeys!

Swedenborg often describes spiritual awakening and growth as coming further and further into a place of true Love-centeredness, which brings with it indescribable peace (or sabbath) and clarity of understanding (or faith). This type of love is the inverse of self-centeredness and hate, meaning that it's a true warmth and compassion towards our neighbors, enemies, ourselves, and God - just as Jesus asked from us during his earthly ministry. It is this type of love that illuminates and directs a truer faith (no matter the religion), because otherwise our "faith" serves our selfish and hurtful desires, which cares little for the actual truth, damns others to hell for not agreeing with us, and uses our beliefs to badger even our families from a state of fear.

The fourth day of creation paints a similar picture. It describes us when we've developed enough on our journey of enlightenment to allow love to start to reign, which is the greater light and source of warmth placed in the sky: the sun. The lesser light, the moon, as well as the stars, describe the faith and truths of faith that come from that love and are directed by it. Without the love represented by the sun, faith, like the moon, is cold and relatively lightless, and so are we.

At this stage of starting to circle the sun of love in our spirit, even when we find ourselves in the midst of spiritual night or winter, this greater light provides the warmth of love that helps us continue our journey of growth, as well as the light that reflects off of the moon that helps us find our way to another day.

In a sense, the fourth day not only describes a new stage of spiritual growth where we start to truly listen to the invitations of Divinity to love all life as ourselves and love the source of love itself (which are our neighbors and God), but it also describes what we should strive for and allow God to create within us. We do not do the work of our spiritual creation journey, although it often feels like we must strive quite hard; it is Divinity that strengthens and develops us as we allow her to. The process starts on day one when we allow our inner selves to illuminate with deeper consciousness and awareness, beginning to let go of conceit and our distracted focus on the lightless abyss of selfish attachments and aversions.

By the time we reach day four in our personal journeys, we've already started to glean the benefits of our spiritual growth - even to the extent that we've experienced some spiritual fruit (as on day three). And it's when the brightness and warmth of God's love for all start to become our own that we begin to be truly centered by Divinity's celestial presence in both our understanding and our motivations. We find that like the sun, God's love shines on everyone, just as our love starts to do on day four. Indeed, Divine Love's openness and diversity so fundamental to the nature of God, that relating God to a sun that shines on everyone is repeated throughout scripture. And we're told by Jesus that we should do similarly in order to find a truer faith: loving, uplifting, and shining on our diversity of neighbors, enemies, and God himself.

Physics tells us that the light from the sun covers the visual spectrum (and more), but it is the nature of each object that decides how it will use the sun's light and which colors it will reflect back - creating the diversity of colors and life around us. God also shares the full spectrum of spiritual light on us as well - speaking to different cultures and peoples fully, but depending on our circumstances and natures we receive and reflect her in different ways. To say that God only speaks to us or our tradition alone is like saying that the sun only shines on our own skin or that of our race; we see the depths of horror and ignorance this type of selfishness leads to in history and unfortunately, in our cultures and politics today.

Indeed, it is the centering of ourselves on a selfless, non-attached but compassionate love and the awareness that brings that are desperately needed in our world today. Self-centered, divisional thinking and failing to realize that we are all expressions of Divine Love and Life constitute the root of our racist, bigoted, classist, and selfish actions, which are coupled with the harmful and hellish feelings of fear, anxiety, hate, lust, distractedness, jealousy, arrogance, attachment, and agitation. In a sense, these are an inversion of the peace and quieted, compassionate mindfulness that we develop when a shining love and an interconnected awareness appear in the sky as the sun and moon of our personal solar systems. When we think that the earth, nay ourselves, are the gravitational root of all life, our approach to living doesn't accord with the way things are and the resulting friction leads to issue after issue - at least as far as we're concerned.

God continues to seek to shine more and more in our spirits so that we may receive the love, peace, and life that we all are meant to have. The parable of the creation story uplifts and seeks to empower this, using imagery found throughout the Bible and other scriptures to describe spiritual truths while inviting us toward greater love and faith. In this we're told that God's love, which like the sun shines on and illuminates everyone, should take root at the heart of our spirits, allowing our ideas and faith to become a guide even in the darkest of times and allowing us to find a life of abundance, diversity and peace. May we each allow such growth to further our lives and society, helping us all to accept and empower others in love - no matter our differences.

Blessings of love and light to you,

Rev. Cory