Day 2 Postscript: The Barrier of the Firmament

I'm going to be traveling soon, and it's been more than a week since I last was able to add to the Eight Days of Creation. Not sure when I'll put together time to write a full post for Day 3 (that one looks like a two-parter too), but in the interim, another quick thought about the firmament:

After Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist, a dove came down and a voice spoke from heaven. It's hard to understand just how big of a deal this was for those who saw it. To them, the sky was a firmament, a hard metal shell. God broke clear through that shell and spoke from his heaven to his son, on earth as it is in heaven. This is a crack opening in the sky and God peeking through. It's not warm and cozy, it's a little scary.

But I think if one of us moderns had been there, and had seen the same thing, the result and message would have been much the same. The same scene to us would mean that God had come from (seemingly) very far away to be very near. His voice would be ringing in our ears. The barrier overcome would be one of space, not metal, but the message would still be that the barrier is broken, and heaven has come to earth in this very ordinary-looking package, Father, Spirit, and Son.

People don't talk as if God is behind a barrier as much anymore. Instead we talk as if he doesn't exist, or is very, very far away -- our cosmology has changed but our symptoms haven't. In all cases, even if it seems he's not here, we look at Jesus and see God breaking through, whether the thickest of shells or the longest of distances, to show himself right here.