Genesis 1: Day 1

"Without form and void" : I hope I am not the only one who is guilty of slurring these two phrases together whenever I read this verse. The truth is, they are separate and unique descriptions! All my life I have thought of it as saying, "Without form and without void" I don't know why, that was just how I understood it as a child, and it stuck with me. Then today I read it and realized it doesn't say that at all. It is without form and it is void! I feel like a serious idiot for misreading it for so long!

• Without form: having no shape 
• Void: emptiness; waste

"Let there be light" : this and verse 5 trips a lot of people up. How on earth could there be light before there was a Sun! And how could there be a night and day before there was moon and sun? Good question! Glad you asked! There are a few reason why this is actually pretty amazing, and not a good argument against the creation account. 

1. God is light: This is all over the Bible, for anyone that cares to go and look. There is no sun or star in Heaven, and yet there is great light. Why? Because the ultimate source of light is God. The light that emanates from Him is so radiant and blinding that there is no other need for a light source. 
2. God is not coming up with the word "Day" and the word "Night." Those came later.  God is creating the concept of day and night, and putting it in place. I would hope that would be obvious, but I'm not assuming anything like common sense is obvious anymore.
3. Logically, the order of events shows that the story is not made up: If a person were to make this story up, what would they start with? The light, or the Sun? It would be logical and natural for the Sun to be created first. And yet it wasn't. I think God did that on purpose. The very fact that the light was created before the Sun, and that God created the concept of Day and Night before the Sun and the Moon is what makes this account so credible. If you are going to make a story up, you want it to line up with as many of the natural laws as possible to give it credence. But if a Creator outside the boundaries of our natural laws is responsible, He will operate on His own agenda. He does not need to follow the natural laws because He is in the process of creating the natural laws.  

These are just my discoveries as I read through my Bible. I'm not doing any kind of study. I'm just reading the Bible, and recording here what I'm finding as I study. Remember, if you want to really understand the Bible, you have to assume that it is a true account. If you assume it is mythology, you'll never get it.