Read: Genesis 1:9-13
And the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. (v. 10 NRSV)
We live on what some call “The Water Planet.” About 70 percent of the surface of the earth is covered with water, a fact evident in photos from space that make clear the vastness of the world’s oceans. Some of us get our drinking water from aquifers—large caches of water underground. Of course, water is everywhere in the air we breathe, apparent in the humidity we feel and the clouds we see. And, interestingly, about 70 percent of our bodies are composed of water. Water around us and water under us and water above us and water in us. Water is everywhere.
In the creation story in Genesis 1 we are told that God separated the waters. In the beginning, there was light and there was darkness, and there were the as yet undivided waters. Then God placed a dome in the sky to separate the waters under the dome from the waters above the dome. This dome God called sky. In other words, God created livable spaces for marine and avian creatures. And God fashioned an inhabitable in-between region in which he created land and vegetation and land creatures, including us, the human earth creature.
So we live, thanks to God’s providential plan, with waters above and waters below.
As you pray, thank God, the Maker of heaven and earth, for the gift of water, without which we could not exist. Ask God to keep us always grateful for the water he gives.
Steve Bouma-Prediger is the Leonard and Marjorie Mass Professor of Reformed Theology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. A graduate of Hope College, his Ph.D. is in religious studies from The University of Chicago. His most recent book is Earthkeeping and Character: Exploring a Christian Ecological Virtue Ethic.
When not teaching or writing, he spends as much time as possible canoeing or backpacking in his favorite places in North America or simply hiking among the magnificent trees in southwest Michigan parks.
