 The 2nd Day: Genesis 1:6-8
6. And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it distinguish between the waters in the waters.
7. And God made the expanse, and made a distinction between the waters which were under the expanse, and the waters which were above the expanse; and it was so.
8. And God called the expanse heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
Summary
The second state is
when a distinction is made between the internal man and the external,
consequently between goods and truths of the Lord alone that are in the
internal man, and the memory-knowledges that belong to the external man.
Details from Emanuel Swedenborg: Verses 6-8,
from
Thomas King,
from Theodore Pitcairn
from illustration by David Chambers,
from
Lee Woofenden:
On the second day,
everything begins to get cleared up. We were kind of confused about this
"spiritual" thing before. But now the Bible tells us that God created
an expanse, or a "firmament" in the heavens, to divide the waters from
the waters. There would be the waters above the firmament, which are the clouds,
and the waters below the firmament, which are all the waters on the earth.
Here we begin to
realize that there is a spiritual truth that is higher than all this material
knowledge that I have. Maybe I'm good at building things; maybe I'm good at
figures; maybe I'm good at preparing meals; maybe I'm good at raising children.
There are all different things we can be good at on this material plane. The
second day of creation is when we realize that there are higher things.
There is a higher truth, and it has everything to do with how we care for one
another; how we understand each other; how we respect each other; how we love
God; and how we show God's love to each other. These are the higher truths that
we need to distinguish from just being able to get along in this world.
We do need to be able to get along in this world; that's
very important. But as we begin to follow a spiritual path, we realize there are
also higher truths that we need to follow--truths that relate to God and to
heaven and to our relationships with each other. This is the second day:
distinguishing the waters above the expanse--the spiritual truths--from the
waters below the expanse--all the material, worldly truths that we need to get
along in this world. "And there was evening, and there was morning, the second
day."
from
Lee Woofenden | 
