Coming from a Catholic background

I grew up hearing the creation story in a very different frame — more mediated by art and tradition, more symbolic and layered through centuries of interpretation. The Sistine Chapel ceiling, the great cathedrals, the liturgical calendar — all of these surrounded the text with a richness that sometimes made the text itself harder to see. Coming to Genesis 1 through evangelical Bible study, where the focus is directly on the words themselves, has been genuinely revelatory. The text is so simple on the surface, and yet the more I sit with it, the more layered it becomes. The simplicity is not shallowness — it is the simplicity of profound truth stated without decoration. In the beginning, God created. I feel as though I am reading it for the first time, even though I have known it all my life.