Preparing to Believe - The Beginning

" In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

That seems reasonable. Maybe not necessary, but reasonable. I can get behind this.

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

These have got to be the most hauntingly beautiful sentences in the English language. Gives me chills. I don't quite understand how you can have Earth without form and waters without an Earth but in deference to the poetically beautiful language I'll be moving on.

"And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

OK. That's handy. Then he separates the water from the water with a "firmament" which I guess is heaven and which also begs the question of where he was hanging out before he created heaven. Then he creates the dry land, oceans, grass (thank you, Jesus), herb (again, thank you), and fruit trees on the second and third days. Then we have this:

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."

WTF? I thought he already did that on the second day. If I was of a skeptical bent and not willing to change my worldview I would call that some sort of contradiction. Maybe it was some sort of universal blanket of light and dark and he didn't ball the light up and create the sun until the fourth day. I can't seem to find the answer to this conundrum in AIG, my source for all things Genesis (Genesitial?). They seem to be a lot more worked up between some sort of apparent contradiction between Genesis 1 and 2 regarding man/plant or plant/man creation timing. At this rate, I"ll never get there. God, I'm so ignorant about this Bible stuff. Thanks a lot for bringing me up Catholic, Mom. Hell, I didn't even know there was a Bible until I left home. But I'm really trying. In the Catholic tradition of doing penance, I've got the Christian Rock station playing in my truck. Although they don't identify themselves as Christian Rock, I believe they
label themselves as Positive Rock. I don't know if these sappy soft rock love poems to Jesus are bringing me closer to God but they definitely got me to believing that there is a Devil . They also break away for Around the World with Ken Ham every hour or so. Today I learned that what scientists call "sea monsters" are actually dragons which are really dinosaurs and they lived until a few hundred years ago. Now, that's what I'm talking about. That gives me the warm fuzzies knowing that everything is already worked out.