Light — Visible, Positioned, Unashamed
Day 64 — 5 March
The First Thing God Ever Made Was Light
“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” — Genesis 1:3 (NKJV)
Before anything else existed, the universe was formless, empty, and wrapped in darkness. Genesis 1:2 describes a scene so barren that the human imagination struggles to picture it: תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ (tohu wabohu, meaning “formless and void” or “desolate and empty”), with חֹ֖שֶׁךְ (choshek, meaning “darkness”) resting upon the face of the deep. There were no stars. There was no colour. There was no warmth. The raw materials of creation sat in total obscurity, waiting for a word that would change everything.
And when God spoke His first recorded creative command, He chose light.
Of all the things He could have begun with, structure, life, beauty, order, He reached for אוֹר (or, meaning “light”). The heavens and the earth already existed in their unformed state, but the first thing God introduced into that primordial scene was illumination. Before He separated the waters, before He raised the dry ground, before He hung a single star or breathed life into a single creature, He said: יְהִ֣י א֑וֹר (yehi or, meaning “let there be light” or “let light exist”).
The Hebrew is startling in its economy. Two words. יְהִי (yehi, meaning “let there be” or “let it come into existence”) is a jussive form of the verb הָיָה (hayah, meaning “to be” or “to exist”), the same verb root from which God later revealed His own name to Moses at the burning bush: אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה (ehyeh asher ehyeh, meaning “I AM THAT I AM”). The connection is profound. The God who IS, the eternal self-existent One whose being knows no interruption, spoke light into being using a word drawn from the same root that describes His own existence. Light came from the One who IS, and it came bearing something of His character.
Then three words of astonishing simplicity: וַֽיְהִי־אֽוֹר (wayehi or, meaning “and there was light” or “and light came to be”). Command and fulfilment, separated by nothing. There was no delay, no process, no gradual dawning. The word was spoken, and the thing existed. The verb וַיְהִי (wayehi, meaning “and it was” or “and it came to be”) mirrors the command exactly: yehi or became wayehi or. What God commanded, reality obeyed instantly and completely.
What Was Light Before There Was a Sun?
This is a question that has captivated theologians and scientists alike, and it deserves honest attention. The sun, moon, and stars were placed in the expanse on the fourth day of creation (Genesis 1:14–19). Yet light appeared on day one. What, then, was this light?
The text itself does not explain the mechanism, and speculating beyond what Scripture reveals would carry us past the boundary of faithful interpretation. What the text does reveal is the theological priority. God chose to make light first because light serves as the foundation upon which everything else becomes visible, ordered, and purposeful. Without light, the subsequent acts of creation would remain unseen. The separation of waters, the appearance of land, the flourishing of vegetation, all of it required illumination to be perceived, appreciated, and inhabited.
Consider what modern physics has discovered about light, and notice how beautifully it echoes the theological priority Genesis establishes. Light is the fastest phenomenon in the known universe, travelling at approximately 299,792 kilometres per second. Einstein demonstrated that nothing with mass can reach or exceed this speed; light sets the absolute boundary of velocity in creation. It is the standard by which distance in the cosmos is measured: a light-year, the distance light travels in a single year, is the yardstick of the heavens. And light is the means by which we perceive virtually everything: colour, shape, depth, distance, beauty. Remove light, and the material world still exists, yet it becomes entirely inaccessible to the observer. Light is the great revealer.
The theological resonance is remarkable. The God who is Spirit and omnipresent, who fills heaven and earth, who is described in 1 John 1:5 as light itself with absolutely no darkness in Him, made light the first element of His visible creation. He began with the thing that most closely resembles His own nature as perceived by human senses. Before there was soil to grow food, before there was water to sustain life, before there was air to fill lungs, there was light. As though the Creator’s first instinct was to stamp something of His own character onto the fabric of the universe, making visibility itself the opening act.
What Did God See When He Looked at the Light?
The verse that follows is equally significant: וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָא֖וֹר כִּי־ט֑וֹב (wayyar Elohim et ha’or ki tov, meaning “and God saw the light, that it was good”). The verb וַיַּרְא (wayyar, meaning “and He saw” or “and He observed”) is an Anthropomorphism, human language describing the divine assessment from our perspective. God, being omniscient, already knew the light was good before He made it; the “seeing” is for our benefit, telling us that the Creator evaluated His work and declared it fitting.
And the evaluation? כִּי־טוֹב (ki tov, meaning “that it was good” or “that it was fitting”). The word טוֹב (tov, meaning “good,” “beautiful,” “fitting,” or “functioning as intended”) carries a richness similar to the Greek καλός (kalos, “beautiful”) we explored yesterday. This light was functionally excellent, aesthetically beautiful, and morally aligned with the character of the One who made it. The first thing God created received the first divine commendation. Light and goodness are bound together from the opening page of Scripture.
Now step back and consider the sweep of what this means for you.
Jesus stood on a Galilean hillside and told ordinary people, “You are the light of the world.” We have spent four days exploring the implications of that declaration: identity (Day 60), positioning (Day 61), purpose (Day 62), and the beauty of works that glorify the Father (Day 63). But today’s passage takes us to the very origin of the metaphor. When Jesus called you light, He was reaching all the way back to the first creative act, the moment when God looked at a formless, empty, dark universe and decided that the very first thing it needed was what He Himself most resembled.
Light is the oldest created thing in the biblical narrative. It precedes the sun. It precedes the stars. It precedes life itself. And when God looked at you and declared you to be the light of the world, He was connecting your identity to the very first thing He ever made, the thing He evaluated and pronounced good before anything else in creation received that commendation.
There is an elderly gardener who rises before dawn each spring to prepare his allotment before the neighbourhood wakes. He turns the soil while the sky is still grey, and by the time the first jogger passes the fence, the ground is already ready for planting. He has been doing this for forty years, and he will tell anyone who asks that the secret is always the same: “You prepare in the dark so the light has something to land on.” He learned this from the soil, but the principle is older than agriculture. It is older than the earth. It belongs to the first morning of creation itself, when God prepared formless matter in the darkness and then spoke light into being so that everything He had prepared could be seen.
You carry that same light. The identity Jesus gave you on the hillside is rooted in the oldest creative act recorded in Scripture. You are light because the God who made light first, who evaluated it and called it good, who stamped His own luminous character onto the opening moment of the universe, placed that same identity within you when He called you His own. Your light is ancient. Your purpose is original. And the darkness that surrounds you in any season of life is the same kind of darkness that covered the deep in Genesis 1:2, real, pervasive, heavy, and entirely unable to resist the moment God speaks His word into it.
The first thing God ever made was light. And the first thing He sees when He looks at you is the same.
Declaration
I carry the light that God spoke into being at the dawn of creation. My identity is rooted in the oldest act of divine making, the moment when the God who IS looked at a dark and formless world and chose illumination as His opening word. I am yehi or made personal: light commanded into being by the voice of the eternal I AM. The same God who saw the first light and called it tov looks at my life and sees something beautiful, fitting, and good. I am ancient light in a present world. I am the radiance of a God whose nature has always been shining, and I carry that radiance into every dark room, every uncertain season, every formless situation that awaits the word that brings order. I am light because He is light, and what He made first, He made to last.
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