Creation

Sis. Poaletti gave sharing time on the Creation yesterday. She broke down the days and what blessings we got from each day of creation based on the blessings listed in D&C 59: 18-19. A couple things I found interesting - one is blessings were added as new things were made. The other is that the creation of vegetation alone fulfilled every one of the blessings outlined:

18 Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart;

19 Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul.

Another thing I remembered that I'd learned at the temple before is that the creation had a very specific order. For instance - there had to be water and land and there had to be light before there could be plant life. There had to be seasons for the different harvests. There had to be plant life before there could be sea and bird life and these were needed before animal life and all before human life. But something else I got out of this that I hadn't realized before - according to genesis, I haven't studied the account in the Pearl of Great Price yet, is that first there was sea life. Then the next day was animal life - could be that animals originated from the sea as in Evolution? But also that animals and humans were created in the same day.

On a different note in the same topic of Creation, we believe we had a part in the Creation. That we were allowed to help and even required to help as these things were being created. By doing so we were taught how things work and given the knowledge we would need to make our earthly life better. Of course we forget these things when we are born but we "remember" them again as we study and learn. Which could be why when we discover something new, or learn something new to us, we are excited. The excitement is our spirits remembering something we learned in the pre-existence and it feels right to us.

But anyway, Alan says that maybe we were divided into groups and each group had a different aspect of creation that they were to do. His idea is "this group handles this prototype and the next group over here is the great meteor group to clean the slate for the next group" and so on.

Maybe so, but I had a distinct thought that whatever part we played in the Creation had to do with the specific talents that we had in the pre-existence and that we still have now. For instance, a physicist today might have participated in the first day and helped to organize the matter into a world or helped to separate day and night. A botanist would have worked on plant life. A zoologist, animal life. A mechanical engineer - the workings of the bodies of plant, animal and human. An electrical engineer - the process and need for lightening storms as well as nervous systems. A people engineer i.e. manager skills might have been over their own little group and helped to keep them organized. An artist - the colors and shapes of plants and animals, ground and sea, and sky. A musician - the sounds of waves crashing and wind blowing, songs of birds, and sounds of other animal life and even the way our ears interpret these sounds. A teacher - organized the ways certain animals taught their young to survive. A mother - the mechanics of family groups in the animal kingdom.

If we think of what talents we have, we might have an idea of some of the roles we played in the Creation and that's pretty enlightening.