Land and Life: Genesis 1:9-13

God spoke to the waters below the sky: "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear."

And it was so.

Picture the waters rushing, draining, gathering into basins and channels, revealing what had been hidden beneath—rock and soil and sand, the bones of a planet emerging from the deep. Mountains rose. Valleys sank. Coastlines drew themselves where water met land for the first time.

God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

But he was not finished with day three.

"Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds."

And the earth exploded with green.

Grass pushed up through virgin soil. Flowers unfurled petals that had never known sunlight—though the sun had not yet been made. Trees stretched toward the sky, roots plunging deep, branches reaching wide, fruit swelling on limbs. Every seed contained the blueprint for its kind, life programmed to reproduce itself, generation after generation.

And God saw that it was good.

And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

The canvas now had texture. The world had bones and skin and the first whisper of life. But the lights had not yet been hung.