From the Essence of God

Traditional Biblical scholarship maintains that God created everything out of nothing.  In other words, there was no pre-existent matter, or building blocks used by God to create the Creation.  The beginning verses of Genesis speak of this as they read, "...the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the earth and darkness covered the face of the deep..."  (Genesis 1:2)  Creation ex-nihilo is how the theologians speak of it as they declare that God created out of nothing.   

And while the biggest reason for this theological landing point has to do with affirming that nothing exists which God did not create, there is another thing to consider about the origin of the stuff and the life of the creation.  As we read a little further we come to verse 26 which says, "Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness...' "  Here is a Word which speaks to the possibility that the Creation itself bears the imprint of holy presence as well as the possibility that we were created not from nothing, but from something which points to the essence of God, the Creator.  Even as we bear the physical genetic makeup of our parents, so do we bear a kind of spiritual DNA which gives life to our soul.     

To some all of this may sound like a lot of theological hairsplitting that does not matter and there is certainly some truth in such a conclusion.  On the other hand, it is also a way of realizing that our origin, our beginning, our creation is filled with things which speak of the nature and the essence of the Creator.  Out of His goodness and out of His love we were created and there is within us the markings of such things as these which point to the essence of the Creator.