"Ou se yon aksidan." You were an accident.

Daphnée was sixteen when a cousin said it at a family party in Brooklyn — half joking, half not. Everybody laughed. Daphnée did not. She already knew her mother had not planned her. Now she knew everybody else knew too.

For three weeks she barely talked. She stopped singing in the youth choir. At night she lay awake thinking, If nobody meant for me to be here, why am I here?

Her grandmother, Grann Mèsilia, was visiting from Jacmel. One night she took Daphnée up to the roof of the building. The city glowed orange. Not one star was visible.

"In Jacmel," Grann said, "the sky at night is so full of stars you could cry. They are here too, pitit. You just can't see them because of the lights. They never left." Then she opened her old Bible on her knees, found the very first page by the light of her phone, and put her finger on one line.

What did that line say? And why did it change everything for Daphnée? Keep reading. It is the first page of the Bible — and it is about you.

Before anything else: God

The Bible does not open with a debate. It does not open with an argument. It opens with a Person.

Before there was a sun, a sea, a mountain or a person, there was God. Not chance. Not nothing. God. And everything else began because He decided it should.

How did He do it? Genesis tells us again and again: "And God said…" — and it was so. The psalmist sings it: "By the word of the LORD were the heavens made… For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast" (Psalm 33:6, 9). The book of Hebrews adds: "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God" (Hebrews 11:3).

Think about that. The same voice that said "Let there be light" is the voice that speaks to you in His Word today. When God speaks, things that were not, begin to be.

The sky is preaching

Grann Mèsilia was right about the stars. Even when we cannot see them, they are still there — and they are still talking.

Every sunrise over the mountains, every wave at the beach, every tiny ant carrying a crumb ten times its size — it is a sermon without words. Paul says that God's "eternal power and Godhead" are "clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made" (Romans 1:20).

So creation is not only a story about the past. It is a window. When you look at what God made, you can learn something about who God is: powerful, wise, generous, full of beauty and order. He did not have to make a world full of colors and flavors and music. He did it because that is what He is like.

Made in His image — on purpose

Then came day six. And here the Bible slows down, as if God Himself were leaning in.

Notice: "Let us make." No other creature in Genesis is introduced like that. Human beings were not an afterthought or a side effect. They were planned, discussed, and made with care. Genesis 2 shows it up close: "the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). Formed by His hands. Filled with His breath.

That is the line Grann Mèsilia put her finger on: "in the image of God created he him." Then she looked at her granddaughter and said, "Your mother did not plan you. But heaven was not surprised. God was not surprised."

David knew this feeling. He wrote: "Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:13-14).

Here is what this means for you: your worth does not come from how you were born, what you own, what papers you carry, or what anyone ever called you. It comes from whose image you carry. And because every person carries that same image, no one is worth more than you — and you are worth no more than anyone else. God "hath made of one blood all nations of men" (Acts 17:26).

"Very good" — and then a day to rest

At the end of day six, God stepped back and looked at everything.

Not "good enough." Not "almost." Very good. No sickness, no death, no hatred, no tears. That is the world God wanted — and, as we will see, the world He still plans to give back.

And then God did something surprising. He stopped.

God was not tired. He rested to enjoy what He had made and to share that joy with the people He had just created. Their very first full day was not a day of work — it was a day with Him. Years later, when God wrote the Ten Commandments with His own finger, He pointed back to this week:

That is why the Sabbath is like the weekly birthday of the world. Every seventh day God says: Remember who made you. Remember that you are more than your work. Come and rest with Me. Jesus said it simply: "The sabbath was made for man" (Mark 2:27) — for every human being, not only for one nation. (For more, see our study "God's Gift of Rest — the Sabbath.")

The Creator has a name

Here is the part many people have never heard. Who exactly was speaking on that first page? The Gospel of John answers by starting with the same three words as Genesis:

A few verses later John tells us who the Word is: the One who "was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). Jesus. Paul says the same thing:

Read that again slowly. The hands that shaped Adam from the dust are the hands that were nailed to the cross. The Creator did not stay far away from His broken creation. He came into it. He walked our roads, ate our food, cried our tears — and died to buy us back.

And "by him all things consist" — that means "hold together." Right now, today, the same Jesus is holding the stars in place and holding your next heartbeat. You are not forgotten in a corner of a big universe. You are held.

What went wrong — and the One who makes all things new

If God made everything "very good," why is the world full of pain? The Bible is honest: sin came in through the first human beings' choice to distrust God, "and death by sin" (Romans 5:12). God did not create death. It is an intruder.

But the Creator has not given up on His creation — or on you. The One who made you once can make you new:

And at the very end of the Bible, the same Creator sits on the throne and says: "Behold, I make all things new" (Revelation 21:5). The story that began in a perfect garden ends in a perfect home.

That is why God's last message to the world, in Revelation, calls every nation back to the first page:

Worship the One who made you. Not money. Not fear. Not the opinions of people. Him.

Daphnée went back to the youth choir the next Sabbath. She wrote Genesis 1:27 on a card and taped it to her mirror, right where she would see it every morning before school. Under it, in her own handwriting, she added four words: "Not an accident. Chosen."

Whatever anyone has called you — you were made on purpose. Made in His image. Made by Jesus. And He is not finished with you yet.

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