“In the beginning, when God created the world… And God said…”
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Nothing came into being without him, and without him nothing came into being. And what came into being with him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
It is instructive and interesting to compare the opening of Genesis and the opening of the Gospel of John. John is actually much more poetic–at least in the English translation.
Because John used the Greek Logos (word) which had deep meaning in Greek philosophy, and because John often calls the opposition “The Jews”, a generation of scholars taught that John was not a Jewish book, but rather a Greek and anti-Semitic book. I have come to realize that they perhaps let their cultural influences capture too much of their thinking.
According to the Hebrew creation account, when God created, he said. And what was the very beginning of creation? Staring at nothingness, God began by separating light from dark (not day and night, that comes later). And what does John use as his metaphor for the entire Gospel–the separation of light and dark.
Our response needs to be to look for the light. And let the light of God shine into the dark places of our lives so that we may live in the light and not the darkness.
And what does that mean in daily life? I’d go look at Paul, and his lists such as fruit of the spirit, or the last five chapters of Romans. Paul makes this all practical.
And then we go screwing it up, because we let darkness block out the light. We need to live oriented toward the light–like a sunflower.
I saw the light, I saw the light
No more darkness, no more night
Now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight
Praise the Lord, I saw the light
Faith Venture 
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