The Bible says, in the beginning the Earth was wild and empty. In Hebrew it is called Tohuwabohu, utter chaos. So God turned on the light just by saying “there shall be light”. And there was light.

And all you could see was this Tohuwabohu, disorder and emptiness.

So God wanted some order. God is a god of order. So he created the world and the universe by giving it order.

The Bible does not really tell us how he did it. The Bible only tells us that God did it with a plan and in the right order: one thing after the other.

Modern science says actually the same thing. It began with sudden light, they call it the Big Bang, a huge explosion right in the emptiness and disorder.

And then things developed.

It is hard to believe that the whole, huge universe is made of just less than 100 different kinds of atoms.

Yes, that is true, all the stars, the sun, the moon, the water, the animals in the water, the plants and the birds and all the animals on Earth and even us, everything is made of just less than 100 different ingredients.

Like when you cook in the kitchen. You put together very specific ingredients, in the right order, with the right amount of heat, and hey presto, it is potato salad, change something, and it is mashed potatoes.

If you mix flour and yeast and water, you have a pizza dough, but if you add butter and sugar, it turns into cake. If you don't use yeast, just flour, water and salt, you can make pasta. If you make the pasta thin and long it is spaghetti, if you make it flat and large, its lasagne, and if you make it round and hollow, its macaroni. Imagine all the things in the world, every flower, the grass, all the trees …

Can you imagine how big the cookbook would be for each and every recipe God created?

Probably from here to the moon and back. How incredible is that (especially when we look at the beautiful full moon these days).

That is why God decided not to write all the creation recipes into the Bible. He thought, “With time people will figure things out even without a recipe. People will understand the order I gave to the universe, the order in nature and in the world.”

He had ordered everything. God had laws for everything, about density and about energy, movement and genetics. We call these laws, this order, the laws of nature.

One law is, that things should fall down if they are heavier than air. Isaac Newton discovered those laws of motion and gravity. Gregor Mendell found out about heredity, Copernicus, Keppler and Galilei found out the laws that make the planets move around the sun.

Today, when people find new laws of creation they may get the Nobel Prize for physics, biology or chemistry. In actual fact, there are causes and effects for everything, and once we find out the relationship of all causes and effects, we have found another one of God’s laws for his creation.

God wanted order, maybe so we could find things out. Because if things always follow the same rules, we can figure the rules out. Just like watching sports and understand the rules after a while.

God also wanted order for us people. He gave orders to Adam and Eve, like: “Take care of my creation,” or, “Be fruitful and multiply,” which means, try to have children and try to be a family. “Don’t eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

Later he gave Moses the Ten Commandments: honour God and don’t make anything more important than him, honour God’s name and keep the Sunday holy. Honour your parents, don’t kill, don’t betray those you love, don’t steal, don’t lie and gossip, and don’t be jealous of each other.

Then he thought how to make those Commandments even easier and shorter. He came into this world in Jesus Christ and taught us: “This is my commandment that you love one another”, because all the commandments and all the prophets can be summed up in the idea of love. Love God and your neighbour as yourself.

Wow, imagine, if everybody would just keep this order God wanted. Imagine if everybody would be friendly, keep creation in nice order, not litter the beaches or throw trash into the bushes, imagine if every one of us would love one another, which basically means, if we all would make sure that everyone is taken care of.

Jesus tried to teach that. He took care of the sick and the handicapped, he took care of those people, whom others didn’t like, he took care of the people, when they were hungry. He could feed them with just five bread loaves and two fish, thousands of them.

The first disciples and followers of Jesus understood that. They shared everything, they gave to the poor, and they shared their meals and their houses. We can read about that in Acts 2.

They had learnt to trust God and trust one another. Faith is all about trust.

If there were only people in the world who have this kind of trust, people who understand that we should help each other, that we don’t have to worry, this world would be even better.

To be honest, all people may have weaknesses at times.

We all make mistakes, are selfish, or hurt others at times. That is what separates us so easily from each other and from God. We call that separation sin. We all have sinned and sin again and again, even if we try hard not to sin. It may work for a while, but we all fail at some time.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John, 1:8-9)

That was part of Christ’s teaching as well – forgiveness. He was willing to take all the sin of the world on him, even to be killed on the Cross, so that we could know for sure, that God forgives us, freely, just because he is friendly to us. That is his grace, mercy and compassion. He wants us to be his children, and we are his children, living in His light, making the world a better place for all.

• Karsten Decker is a German theologian with a double degree equivalent to an MTheol and MDiv. He studied in Marburg (Germany), Knoxville (USA), and Toronto (Canada) and comes from a united church of Lutheran and Reformed Churches. He was the pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Bermuda from 2010 to 2017, and after returning from Germany is now the temporary pulpit supply at Centenary Untied Methodist Church in Smith’s