Genesis 1 claims that God created a universe of both space and matter, heavens and earth, bound in time with a beginning. And on what would be the first day, God adds the way that we would measure time and great distances: He creates light. It’s easy to imagine in the modern age that we know most of what there is to know about the universe. But in just five verses the Bible reveals how little we actually know. Senior NASA astrophysicist Dr. Deb Haarsma who is a Christian and former president of the BioLogos Institute says, “data from the W-MAP and Planck satellites has shown that 27 percent of the universe is dark matter, a scientific mystery that does not emit, reflect or absorb any light. We can detect it only by its gravitational effect on visible matter.” Dark matter is what holds galaxies and large cosmic structures together by providing the extra mass needed for them to form and spin without flying apart. But that’s just dark matter; the greatest part of the universe—68 percent of it—is what we call dark energy, an even more mysterious substance that drives how the universe expands. “For all our advances in physics and chemistry,” she says, “what we can see and know can only describe 5 percent of the universe. For the remaining 95 percent of the universe, we have no current explanation.” It turns out we understand light way better than we understand the darkness. But Genesis says that God understands them both, that He separates them for the blessing of His creation and that He names them both. And ultimately, the fact that God names them both shows us that God has authority over both light and dark; what He has made He has control over.
