9 October 2026 Interestingly enough, it was a vision of the creation which inspired Edwin Muir to write poetry. And in his poetry, these cosmic themes are expressed deeply – the Creation, the Fall, Eden, the Exile, the Return. Of all his poems, ‘The Horses’ must be his greatest. It’s the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust. The radios are dumb. The tractors lie about the filed like ’dank sea-monsters’. The silent waiting is broken by the sound of the horses returning to plough the earth. They had been exiled too. Banished from the earth. Sold for new tractors. We did not dare go near them. Yet they waited, Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent By an old command to find our whereabouts And that long-lost archaic companionship. ‘That long-lost archaic companionship’ was to be found in the Garden of Eden where God had put man ‘to till it and keep it’. Man lives with the creatures which God has made. He is given the privilege of naming them. Afterall, they have be...
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8 October 2026 Edwin Muir was born on the island of Orkney. The first fourteen years of his life were spent in this idyll – and idyll which was shattered when his family was forced to move to Glasgow. Within four years, his parents were dead and two of his five siblings had been buried with them. Throughout his life, he longed to return to that Eden which he experienced on Orkney. But he never made it. He lived in London and Prague – and suffered another two exiles. The one when he suffered psychological distress and sought some solace in Jungian analysis. The other when he and his wife, Willa, were expelled from Prague in 1948 when the communists took over. In his autobiography, George Mackay Brown pays tribute to his fellow Orcadian’s genius. ‘Those dreadful experiences he set against his childhood in Orkney,’ he writes. ‘Without that contrast, he would have been a different kind of poet, and a lesser one.’
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7 October 2026 It’s not plain sailing in God’s creation! Right from the start, this is a fact. Although we are convinced of the goodness of creation, we are not without a little doubt! For in the second verse of Genesis 1, we read that ‘the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep’. How can this be? If God created the heavens and the earth, did he create the formless void and the darkness covering the face of the deep? The story-teller leaves the question unanswered. But surely we have to admit that the goodness of creation is at least blemished by the existence of this formless void and deep darkness? Behind the story-teller’s tale of creation, there is a hint of a darker tale of a more chaotic world inhabited by an unruly monster – Behemoth, Leviathan, Rahab and the forces of evil which God has yet to vanquish!
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6 October 2026 The third important relationship in Genesis 1 is between human beings and living creatures. The catalogue of living creatures is brief but revealing. The story-teller has other points to make too! As well as the fish of the sea, the birds of the air and the cattle of every kind, there are some unusual creatures mentioned – creeping things (which are not very pleasant) and great sea monsters (which are a but scary)! Isn’t this wonderful too? God’s providence extends to those animals which are creepy and scary. They all have a place within his creation. For there’s much more to the creation than human beings. Animals are not denigrated but blessed. And in exercising our dominion over them, we have no right to abuse them. Vegetarians, the anti-hunting lobby, the animal rights activists, the RSPCA, the World Wildlife Fund and so on encourage us to exercise restraint and redefine the boundaries of our dominance.
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5 October 2026 The second important relationship is between men and women. Interestingly enough, ‘God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’ There is no denying the equality born out of God’s creativity. And yet, even his Church has found it impossible to celebrate it until fairly recently and then not even universally! Remember St. Paul? He wrote to the Corinthians about the way men and women should conduct themselves in church. Women were forbidden to worship God in the church at Corinth without a hat upon their heads! But the rule didn’t apply to men. Paul argues. ‘For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God.’ Didn’t Paul read his Old Testament? Didn’t he remember Genesis? Doesn’t the story-teller say that women were made in the image of God too? Not according to Paul. They have to wear hats in church because ‘woman is the reflection of man’! Amazing!
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4 October 2026 The events of the sixth day define three important relationships. The first is the relationship between human beings and God. ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to out likeness.’ says God. Can it be true? Surely not! Joe Corrie, the Fife miner, was convinced that the story-teller was being ironic. In his poem, ‘The Image o’ God’, he writes about this idea through the eyes of a hard worked miner. Crawlin’ aboot like a snail in the mud, Covered wi’ clammy blae, ME, made after the image o’ God – Jings! but it’s laughable tae. ‘Jings! but it’s laughable tae!’ It is laughable isn’t it? Just look at our word – Belsen, Rwanda, Ukraine, Palestine! ‘Made after the image o’ God?’ The ultimate irony! And yet, it’s clear that although the Psalmist says that God ‘remembers that we are dust’, he has chosen human beings to fulfil his purposes int his world. ‘Jings! but it’s laughable tae!’ Such is the wonder of God that he has made us in such a way t...
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3 October 2026 The seven days of creation is a literary mechanism which enables the story-teller to unfold his beautiful tale with great harm and simplicity. He does so with the imaginative use of several literary formula. Consider these two. The creative acts begin with the formula, ‘And God said …’ and end with the refrain, ‘And it was so.’ God speaks and something happens. And God said, ‘Let there be light!’ And there was light. In fact the Hebrew word which is translated ‘create’ is ‘bara’. Unlike any of the other words which are translated as ‘made’, the subject of this particular verb is always God. In the narrative, we are never told what God used to create the heavens and the earth. This has given rise to the doctrine ‘creatio ex nihilo’ – a creation out of nothing. At the end of each creative act, the story-teller says, ‘And God saw that it was good.’ This is true for the first five days of creation. On the sixth, he observes, ‘God saw everything that he...