Genesis A+B Part 3
Then time passed, hurrying across the armature of middle-earth, the Maker pushed along the brilliant light, our Shaper, and that first evening afterwards.
Shadowy darkness pressed on after it, hastening along its trail—that Prince himself created the name “Night” for it.
Our Savior sundered them — they have ever since accomplished and performed the desire of the Lord, eternally over the earth. Then came the second day, a light after darkness.
Then the Warden of Life ordered that a winsome sky-structure be made in the midst of the watery flood.
Our Sovereign divided the waters and then created the fastness of the skies; so that the All-powerful heaved up from the earth through his own word, the Lord Almighty.
The ocean was parted under the high-heavens with holy might, water from those waters that abide under the firmament of the mortal roof.
This is part of the retelling of the Creation story by the Anglo-Saxon storytellers. They call God, Our Shaper. This gives a sense that God is forming Creation like a potter works on clay. It’s as though He is crafting all things with His hands.
By saying ‘Our Shaper’, there is a sense that humanity is part of this ‘shaping’ process too. We are part of Creation. Something I think is lost in our Modern Culture. Something we need to recover.
Here we see the first mention of Middle Earth. We may have heard this phrase from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. The Anglo-Saxons, like many ancient people, saw Creation in three parts; The Heavens, the Earth in the Middle (or Middle Earth) and Hel (the Underworld or Sheol). They believed they were in the middle, between the Heavens and Hel. [We get our word for the Underworld, Hell, from Old English].
The writer uses the term Our Saviour. This may surprise some, as he appears to be linking Christ with God the Creator. The truth is Creation was made through Christ (Colossians 1 v 16). He is part of the Trinity, and by extension, He is God and He is the Creator.
And again we see another unique phrase to describe God, the Warden of Life. This feels like He is a shepherd looking after his sheep. God is the Shepherd of the whole of Creation. Life isn’t just limited to humans, animal and plants, but God gives life and activity to all of everything. We see the stars move, the waves crash and over long periods of time, the mountains erode. Creation is full of movement and life. All things have vitality, both those things seen and those things unseen.
And we are part of this vitality, even after physical death, we live on.