DEVOTION / Did God pause?

Did God pause at any point the day he shaped the planet, its rivers and seas, its mountains and valleys? Did he slow the process of creation to contemplate how the topography of the planet would shape the future?

Did God pause?

I know this is assigning finite human emotions to the infinite God. But that's where my mind went when I thought recently about Genesis 1. I wondered,

• Did he pause when he spoke the narrow land mass into existence that would become Israel?

• Did he take special care when he called the mountain top into existence that would later become Jerusalem?

• Did his word linger over the skull-shaped hill where death would silence the Word of God?

• Did he give extra attention to shaping the rockface where Joseph of Arimathea would create a tomb and from which the dead Jesus would rise in triumph?

The Scriptures only report, God said, 'Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.' And it was so. God called the dry ground 'land,' and the gathered waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good…. And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day (Genesis 1:9,10,13).

God never put his plan for us on pause

Nonetheless, the eternal God — who is perpetually aware of events across the expanse of time — carefully shaped this planet to serve his gracious plan for saving the wayward souls who would follow the self-disgraced Adam and Eve.

Our God of infinite wisdom didn't have to pause before speaking the foundations of Jerusalem into existence. But he did form every rock layer of Mount Moriah, the Mount of Olives, and Mount Zion to support his intention to make us his children. On the third day of creation, God was executing his plan to save us for himself.

God’s grace gives us pause

His breath did not have to linger over Israel that day. But on Day Three of creation, he had Jesus' Third Day in view. His Word explains, He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight... — to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves (Ephesians 1:4,6).