Read Genesis 2:4-7- 4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens. 5 Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

What do you notice?

Set the scene, again creation story isn’t about the how of creation, it is about the who of creation. Who created? God made the heavens and the earth. But what is that state by which he created? No shrub, no plant, no humanity, just ground, just dust and dirt. The imagery I want us to start with is this was a space of desolation, dry, wilderness that had no life, it was a lifeless place, until the Creator comes on the scene.

What do we see the Creator do?

Streams came up and watered the surface of the ground and in the next section we see trees that have grown that are good. And we see God formed man and breathed the breath of life into him. This first intention of Yahweh, of God, was to bring life to what was lifeless, desolate and he did this through water and breath. God’s intention at creation was to bring life. He did this through water and breath.

Tim Mackie of the Bible Project shares it this way. “Water is a gift of divine life that makes two types of derivative life possible and both bear fruit in the land. Humans bear fruit through what they do and trees bear fruit through what they grow. In the biblical imagination, people are like trees and both have their life source rooted in water.”

I know this may sound unique and I will show you passages throughout scripture that carry this motif. But before we get there, let us remember what the ancients thought about water. Water was chaos to them, water filled people with fear from the chaos of a storm rising up or the chaos monsters that lurked underneath.

But what does God’s creation show us? Genesis 1 waters and the Genesis 2 waters form a combined statement of Yahweh as the master of the chaos waters, the one who can turn them into a source of life. Which means, when any story happens at a well or a spring it is a connect to creation, where God brings divine life.

Read Isaiah 43:19- See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.