God makes the world

Scripture does not open with an argument for God. It opens with God already at work. Into formlessness and darkness he speaks, and there is light; he separates and fills, names and blesses, and six times over he looks at what he has made and calls it good. Human beings come last, made in his own image, male and female, and given the world to care for rather than to consume. Then the seventh day — God rests, and makes rest holy. Everything that follows in the Bible stands on this opening: the world is not an accident, matter is not evil, work is good and so is stopping, and the people who bear God's image bear it together. Whatever has gone wrong since, it was not wrong at the start.