We believe in God, the Creator. <\/strong>Who\u2019s love is the life-force of the Universe.<\/p>

TWO CREATION STORIES<\/p>

In the book of Genesis, there are two main creation stories in the first two chapters.\u00a0 The first one begins with, \u201cIn the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.\u201d\u00a0 The second creation story begins with almost the same line but switches the words heaven and earth in the order they appear.\u00a0 \u201cIn the day that the Lord God created the Earth and the Heavens\u2026\u201d\u00a0 You will probably not like this if you are one who only reads the Bible literally.\u00a0 The first story had God creating in 6 days and the second it only takes one.\u00a0 Putting that aside, it strikes me that these two stories seem to come from two different understandings of how the creation happened.\u00a0 The first story in Genesis 1, which is thousands of years newer, has God speaking things into existence.\u00a0 \u201cAnd God said, \u2018LET THERE BE LIGHT.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Light appeared.\u00a0 This happens throughout the first story. It shows the power in creation.\u00a0 In the second story, God gets down and dirty, fashioning things out of clay.\u00a0 It shows the intimacy of creation.\u00a0 We need both of them to better understand God as Creator.\u00a0 God is both powerful and intimate.\u00a0 These stories then balance each other out.\u00a0 You might say that the first one understands God the creator from a heavenly view and the second one from an Earthly view.\u00a0 I don\u2019t take either of these stories literally but taken together they allow us to wrestle with what it may have actually been like. \u00a0<\/p>

GOD DREAM<\/p>

What interests me is not that God created the world, or how long it took, but that God has given us the gift to be creators as well.  Every living thing God created has the ability and recipe to continue to create. It is not just that we also create but God calls us to be co-creators of the world that God dreams this world will become.  <\/p>

THE WAY OF PEACE<\/p>

Jesus called it the, \u201cKingdom of Heaven.\u201d\u00a0 He used this title to compare it to the earthly kingdom that they all knew too well, \u201cThe Kingdom of Rome.\u201d\u00a0 Jesus said, in God\u2019s Kingdom the last will be first and first, last and the greatest will be the servant.\u00a0 Both kingdoms had a slogan for peace, Pax Romana, peace through domination and Pax Christi, peace through Christ.\u00a0 The way the Emperor of Rome made peace was by threatening and killing all those who disagreed.\u00a0 The way of Peace in God\u2019s Kingdom is through loving your neighbor and praying for those who disagree with you.\u00a0 God\u2019s kingdom is as creative as Rome\u2019s was destructive.\u00a0 When we use our creativity to create a beautiful world for all people, we align ourselves with God\u2019s creative power. \u00a0<\/p>

EVOLUTION<\/p>

I don\u2019t personally think God is threatened by the theory of Evolution.\u00a0 It may actually be a way of understanding from a scientific perspective how God created the world.\u00a0 Even if you use evolution and the big bang as a way to explain away God, you are stuck with where the energy came from to create the big bang.\u00a0 While it may be a fun distraction to argue about things we can never know, it doesn’t help us figure out why we have been created or what we have been created for. Instead, let us explore the role we have as co-creators and what our creative actions can do in our world.\u00a0
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We believe in God, the Creator. Who\u2019s love is the life-force of the Universe. TWO CREATION STORIES In the book of Genesis, there are two main creation stories in the first two chapters.\u00a0 The first one begins with, \u201cIn the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.\u201d\u00a0 The second creation story begins with almost the same line but switches the words heaven and earth in the order they appear.\u00a0<\/p>\n