The Song of the Lion at Creation
The Song of the Lion at Creation.
“In the beginning, Elohim created the heavens and the earth. The earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. There was no form, completely void of substance, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God (the Breath of Elohim, the divine Wind) hovered over the watery abyss.” (Genesis 1:1-2).
The Eternal Song. It appears that there was never a time of complete silence. Even before the creation of the world, the everlasting community of the Godhead were engaged in an ongoing trialogue of love and purpose. It seems that communication is a part of the nature of God, so it makes sense that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were having conversations between Themselves before the wings of the Spirit-Wind were heard flapping over the watery abyss. Each of the Three are so in love with each other that they can’t wait to express this love within their Fellowship. There must have been a discussion within this intimate Inner Circle before the Consuming Fire sent forth a flame to provide light for the universe about to be hatched.
Eternal Harmonies. Now if each of this divine Triad are all speaking at once, could they understand each other? Of course, because their trialogue has to be, not spoken, but sung in harmony in which each Voice is different but able to harmonize into one unified song. It makes sense to our limited human brains that Three-in-One suggests the presence of an everlasting three-part harmony singing the same song of Love. Before the flight of the mother Bird over an empty nest, anticipating the new birth of a wonderful world, the supposedly empty atmosphere was spiritually full of sound, the Elohim in full-throated harmony of the divine creation song. Even before the eternal Singers sang creation into existence, there were the eternal sounds of the Trinity singing to and with each Other.
“The most powerful and magical of language is music. The reason for this is that music is the original language. Music is the language of creation.” (Peter Kreeft).
A Divine Song. God spoke the light into this world’s existence through His Word. Another way of putting it is that the Creator sang the universe into being. The darkness that had once been on “the face of the deep” and enveloped the earth is now dispelled by creation’s first light. God sings the lyrics of creation, “Let there be…” and it appears. One wonders if another way of saying “God said” is that the Trinity Trio harmonized creation into existence, a truly creative group choral project. The early church leaders believed that the Father made heaven and earth through the Son Jesus and in the Holy Spirit, all of Them working in concert. The Trinity spoke the Word in song, and creation happened. And light became the first creature!
The Song of the Lion. In C. S. Lewis’ wondrous account of Aslan singing creation into existence, might we be witnessing a case of art imitating reality, when imaginative art reflects literal reality? Why not? The following is an excerpt from The Magician’s Nephew from Lewis’ Narnia series, chapters 8-9:
“In the darkness something was happening at last. A voice had begun to sing… the most beautiful noise he had ever heard. It was so beautiful he could hardly bear it… Then two wonders happened at the same moment. One was that the voice was suddenly joined by other voices; more voices than you could possibly count. They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale: cold, tingling, silvery voices. The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars. They didn’t come out gently one by one, as they do on a summer evening. One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out… If you had seen and heard it…, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing…
The Voice on the earth was now louder and more triumphant; but the voices in the sky, after singing loudly with it for a time, began to get fainter… Far away, and down near the horizon, the sky began to turn gray. A light wind, very fresh, began to stir. The sky, in that one place, grew slowly and steadily paler. You could see shapes of hills standing up dark against it. All the time the Voice went on singing… The eastern sky changed from white to pink and from pink to gold. The Voice rose and rose, till all the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled to the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose… The earth was of many colours: they were fresh, hot and vivid. They made you feel excited; until you saw the Singer himself, and then you forgot everything else.
It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy, and bright it stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song and it was about three hundred yards away… And as he walked and sang the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the Lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave… Soon there were other things besides grass. The slopes grew dark with heather… And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction… But now the song had once more changed. It was more like what we should call a tune, but it was also far wilder. It made you want to run and jump and climb… Showers of birds came out of the trees. Butterflies fluttered. Bees got to work on the flowers as if they hadn’t a second to lose… And now you could hardly hear the song of the Lion; there was so much cawing, cooing, crowing, braying, neighing, baying, barking, lowing, bleating, and trumpeting… Then there came a swift flash like a fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: ‘Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters… Creatures, I give you yourselves. I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and I give you myself.”