Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day.
Genesis 1:6-8
Here in Genesis 1:6 we see God continuing to separate and make distinctions. Through this separation of firmament and waters God shows His power to make order from disorder. He powerfully forms purpose from seeming chaos.
When translated, the word for firmament meaning “Heavens”, also has a literal meaning of “stretching something” like when a metal worker hammers metal. Such a small tidbit of information, but like most small things, this tidbit is fully packed with significance.
You see, metal work was familiar to the guys and gals who lived during the time Moses was penning the Creation story under divine inspiration. The process of stretching metal is arduous. The metal worker will strike the metal thousands of times spreading, stretching, and shaping the metal. The amount of pressure determines how much it stretches. Excessive hammering on the other hand is often a problem that a well trained metal worker will watch for. Each blow is important and has a desired purpose. If the metal is hammered excessively the metal will harden, become brittle, and difficult to shape. Often to prevent this, the metal worker will put the metal aside for a time until he finds the metal to respond better to His technique.
This is so applicable to our lives today. Our destination is Heaven, every day God is fully molding and shaping us through the “blows” of life’s circumstances. Our faith gets stretched, our relationship with the Lord and others gets shaped, and the things that pressure us, and hammer our thoughts, emotions, actions, and spirits are working into us God’s purposeful design for our eternity. Here’s the thing many of us run into in this process, we just don’t want to respond to the Lord’s techniques of shaping us for eternity, because the Lord masterfully knows how to shape us, He will never “Hammer” us excessively, He will use the precise amount of blows needed to shape us perfectly (1 Cor. 10:13). We’re not just here on earth for the heck of it. God is actually shaping us here on earth for what is to come in Heaven.
But there’s more!
The text shows the firmament divides the waters beneath and above. (Verse 6) No matter who you are or where you’re from, everyone needs water. Water is a necessity for survival. In the bible water often represented the Lords blessing of abundant life and provision. It’s found below in the ground, or high in the sky. Water in the ground is exclusively found where a spring is flowing, and water in the sky is only found where precipitation gathers, the same is true spiritually. The water in our hearts is exclusively found in the flowing spring of Jesus Christ (John 4:13, 14, John 7:38). Jesus is and always will be the portion we need (Is. 61:7-8), the provision we cry out for (Phil. 4:19), and the life we long to abide in (John 3:15).
The fact is the Lord desires to shape us, which can be disheartening when we lose sight of the fact that there is purpose to the process. When we fix our eyes on Jesus, we’ll find that surrounding our difficult moments God desires to draw out the blessings from the depths of our hearts and pour out His blessing from His floodgates above.
