What came first?

Sorry, long time no leaf.... But I’ve been alive, don’t worry. Here is a little update: This is my second year teaching at the Christian boarding high school. Last summer, I got a new visa, a religious worker visa. So my friend calls me a missionary now. A missionary, huh? That’s actually cool. Well, I’m teaching a Bible class this year which is something new. So dear friends, please pray for this little missionary-me.

By the way, I have not written poems lately...for a long time actually. Since I started working here. Well, I wrote that Christmas Gift for our school. Then I wrote a few in last April. That’s it. Until one of my students in the Bible class inspired me this week....

“Teacher,” he said, “it is impossible. How could light exist without the sun? Why the light on the first day, then the sun on the fourth day? I can’t understand.” I can’t understand either, I wanted to say. So I was thinking about it later in the evening, then a poem came to me....

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What Came First

We are so used to having
the sun first
then the light
The egg first
then the chicken
The baby first
then the grown-up

God seems so backward creating
the light first
then the sun
The chicken first
then the egg
The grown-ups first
then the baby

We the creatures process cause and effect
A light source
causing light
A single cell
evolving into complex life
An embryo
growing into mature beings

God the Creator produces products as-is
The light
all by itself
The chickens
already grown up
Human beings
with a will to choose

Even before someone claimed
that the sun was God
that all creatures came from an egg
that human reproduction can occur from a single being
He had foreseen our backward ways

The mystery of creation
has no formula
The power of the Creator
exceeds His creatures’ logic
He is the ultimate “I am”
We are the simple “as-is”