genesis 1: A divine collaboration

I love that every time I read scripture some new detail emerges that I did not catch before.

This time, it's how God and Earth collaborate together.

One example of this collaboration: Let the land produce vegetation... and the land produced that vegetation. And when God makes creeping and flying things, he says Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds. There, it says that God made the wild animals...

Did God make vegetation and the animals, or did the land make them? Well, why not both?

Another example is the role of "kinds". God makes things that replicate themselves "according to their kind". He winds up life in a few things, then lets them go. He winds up the creatures in the ocean, then lets them teem with life. He winds up flying things, and then lets them go and replicate themselves and rule the sky.

Creation is a process God begins and creation perfects.

Finally, there's the human race. We get to join in the collaboration too.

One, we get to be "fruitful". Funny how God uses what he makes on Day Four as a metaphoric blue print for Human Beings on Day Six; but with ONE major exception: plants are fruitful all on their own. Human beings can choose to be fruitful, and can choose to be wasteful.

Two, God gives us every "seed-bearing plant" and every "fruit-bearing" tree, AND God gives other animals every green plant. (Apparently we were vegetarians in Genesis chapter 1.)

What does this mean?

We are here in this together, humans and animals. We gotta learn to share whats ours.