“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”
It was through God’s Will, or Voice that Creation was brought into being. Throughout the rest of chapter 1 we find God speaking the sky, the seas, and land into being. It is by His Revealed Will that habitat for life is created. By His Voice the sky is populated with sky creatures, the sea is populated with sea creatures, and the land is populated with land creatures. While there are some exceptions, if you take a sea creature and force them into the sky they do not survive. In the same way if you take a sky creature and force them into the sea they do not survive. The habitat that God created for each creature becomes that creature’s boundary of life. It’s not that death is a punishment for crossing outside one’s habitat; it’s that the habitat itself is a gift God provides to make life possible. For the most part our universe is very inhospitable to life. While scientists search for the edge of our ever-expanding universe, they are also searching for other life-supporting planets. In a universe with hundreds of billions of stars, and even more planets, so far we have not found another single planet with the right conditions to support life. In fact, we have only found one planet that might have the right conditions. Conditions that are inhospitable to life are so common in our universe that the discovery of a planet that has a slight possibility of supporting life is considered a major discovery.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070424_hab_exoplanet.html
We should never take our life-enabling habitat God has graciously given us for granted. His Will holds back the chaos of the cosmos so that I can take my next breath and type this very sentence. If He ever once said, “Let it end” we would all be destroyed by the vacuum of space; the common nothingness which makes up most of our universe.
With this understanding let’s look at the creation of man. What is humanity’s habitat?
Genesis 2:16-17
And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden;
but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”
As humans, our habitat is the Word (or Voice) of God. Just like a land creature would be killed if they went out into the sea, we too will find death by going outside the Will of God. The gift He’s offering us is inside His Will. God’s Will, or Word, provides the right conditions for the kind of Life that He created us to enjoy. We will never experience the Life that He desires for us outside of His Will. By surrendering our will, and depending on His Life at work within us we can enjoy living within His Will.