Created for Relationship
Part Two: From the Beginning
Pixar has been playing a fun little game for decades.
It started in Toy Story, back in 1995. In the background of one scene — blink and you miss it — there's a beat-up yellow pizza delivery truck. White rocket on the side. "Pizza Planet" written across the door. It's there for maybe two seconds. It's not the point of the scene. Nobody mentions it. The story moves on.
Then it showed up in A Bug's Life. Then Monsters, Inc. Then Finding Nemo. Then Cars, Brave, Inside Out — movie after movie, decade after decade, the same battered yellow truck keeps appearing in the background. Pixar filmmakers hid it on purpose – like and Easter egg– in almost every movie they made. It became a kind of inside joke between the storytellers and anyone paying close enough attention.
Once people caught on, it turned into a phenomenon. Fans started pausing movies frame by frame, hunting for the truck. Reddit threads. YouTube videos. Articles with titles like "Every Time the Pizza Planet Truck Appeared in a Pixar Film." The truck itself became the point — not because Pixar put it center stage, but because they hid it just well enough that finding it felt like a reward.
We see ancient, written forms of the Easter eggs in Scripture, too. Unlike Pixar, however, these ancient hidden gems often ARE the point of the story. They weren't written into the ancient words just for fun...but for the purpose of discovering life-changing truth.
We see one of these from the beginning in Genesis 1. It's right there in the creation story. And most of us have read straight past it our entire lives.
Let me show you where to look.
The ancient writers were sneaky (in the best way)
I spent 17 years in Indonesia, and one of the biggest things living there taught me was this: not everyone tells a story the way we do in the West. In the Western world, we move in straight lines. Introduction. Conflict. Resolution. The end. We like bullet points. We like information delivered fast and clean.
Ancient Eastern writers? They told stories in patterns. Repeated images. Themes that circle back on themselves. And they did it on purpose — because they believed the best learning happens when a reader has to slow down, search, and discover for themselves. That's also why Jesus taught in parables. He wasn't being confusing. He was being Eastern.
One of their favorite patterns was called a chiasm, where ideas are layered out in one order, then repeated in reverse. The most important idea isn't saved for the end. It's hidden in the middle.
The meat is in the middle. And Genesis 1 works the same way. The writer buried something right at the center of the creation account — the Pizza Planet truck of the Bible — and has been waiting for someone to pause, look closer, and find it.
Days 1–3: God makes space
Read the first three days of creation and you'll notice a pattern. Every single day, God is doing one thing.
Separating.
Day 1 – Light from darkness – God divides what was mixed
Day 2 – Waters above from below – Chaos begins to find its place
Day 3 – Sea from dry land – Space for something new to grow
Remember what Genesis tells us about the beginning — the world was tohu va vohu. Empty. Dark. Formless. No purpose. And God's very first move is to create space. Separate the chaos. Clear the ground.
That's not random. That's a pattern. And it matters for your life too.
God still works this way. Before He fills anything in us, He first creates room. He separates us from what's keeping us in darkness — old patterns, broken thinking, the chaos of a life lived on our own terms. "Do not conform to the pattern of this world," Paul writes in Romans 12. "Repent and turn to God," Peter calls out in Acts 3. God starts with separation. He always has.
Days 4–6: God fills the space
Now watch what happens next. Days 4, 5, and 6 match up perfectly with the first three — but now God is doing something different.
Filling.
Day 4 – Sun, moon, and stars – The realm of light and dark is filled
Day 5 – Birds and sea creatures – Sky and ocean come alive
Day 6 – Land creatures — and us – The land is filled with life
Separated.
Then filled.
That's the rhythm of creation — and it's the rhythm of redemption too. God calls us out of darkness, then fills us with something better. "The fullness of God," Paul says in Ephesians 3. "Grace upon grace," John says in his first chapter. "Joy and the Holy Spirit," Luke writes in Acts 13. God doesn't leave the empty spaces empty. That's not His way.
"God separates. God fills. And He does it because He loves what He has made."
Now — here's the Easter egg
Right in the middle of the chiasm. Right between day 3 and day 4. The meat and the cheese. The Pizza Planet truck.
Genesis 1:14 is the hidden center of Genesis 1.
"And God said, 'Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years.'" — Genesis 1:14
That phrase "sacred times" is the Hebrew word moadim — the holy days. The appointed times. The moments set apart from the ordinary, reserved for something greater.
God doesn't just separate light from darkness. God also separates common time from sacred time.
And here's the question the text is quietly asking us: what are these sacred times for? Who are they for?
Look at day 6 again. After filling the land with creatures, God does something He does for no one else. He creates humanity — male and female — in His own image. And then God rested on day 7. Sacred time. Holy time. Together time.
God didn't create sacred time for the birds or the fish. He created it for us. He designed time itself — the daily rhythm of evening and morning, the weekly Sabbath, the appointed feasts — so that we would have a reason to stop, to gather, to draw close. Not just to exist alongside God, but to actually dwell with Him.
The point of creation isn't just a beautiful universe. The point is relationship. God built it into the fabric of time itself.
So what does this mean for you?
Think about your own journey with God. There's probably a moment — or a season — when you felt God beginning to separate something in your life. Moving you away from something that was pulling you under. That's not punishment. That's the first act of creation happening again, inside of you.
God separates first. Then God fills. And in between? God has always set aside sacred time — worship, prayer, Sabbath, community — not as obligations to check off, but as invitations to come close.
When we skip those sacred spaces, we're not just missing a ritual. We're missing the whole point of the story. We were created for this. Not just to live — but to dwell with the One who made us.
He didn't just wind up the universe and let it go. He built relationship into the rhythm of time itself.
Two questions worth sitting with
Question 1 – What is God currently separating in your life — and can you trust that He's making room for something better?
Question 2 – When did you last fully enter a "sacred time" with God — not rushing through it, but actually dwelling? What would it look like to reclaim that this week?
God separates.
God fills.
God makes time sacred — for you.
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Steven E Fairbanks
Steven E Fairbanks
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