Happy New Year! Today marks the day that planet Earth has once again completed its annual orbit around the sun. Just how many times the earth has made its journey is anyone’s guess. But we do know the voyage is a long one—584 million miles, to be exact.

The account of creation in the book of Genesis tells us some important things about the earth and its relationship to the sun: “Then God said, ‘Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years. Let these lights in the sky shine down on the earth.’ And that is what happened. God made two great lights—the larger one to govern the day, and the smaller one to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set these lights in the sky to light the earth, to govern the day and night, and to separate the light from the darkness” (Genesis 1:14-18).

One of the most critical things the creation account declares about the sun is that it’s a created object. This might seem obvious to many of us today, but it wasn’t for the original audience of Genesis 1.

When Genesis was written down, God’s people had recently been delivered from 400 years of Egyptian oppression. During that time, the Israelites were continually indoctrinated with the Egyptian belief that the very sun they toiled under each day was one of many deities who played a role in creation.

The Bible’s creation account strongly counters Egypt’s influence on God’s people, revealing that the objects the Egyptians worshiped as gods (the sun, moon, stars, air, land, etc.) weren’t gods at all. They were created by the one true God—the same One who created us. May we worship only our Creator God this year!

NLT 365-day reading plan passage for today: Genesis 1:1–2:3