The Night Chicago Became the White City

On the evening of May 1, 1893, President Grover Cleveland pressed a single golden button inside the Administration Building at the World's Columbian Exposition. In an instant, more than ninety thousand incandescent bulbs blazed to life across six hundred acres of Chicago's Jackson Park. Visitors gasped. Some wept. Most had never seen electric light before. One moment, the fairgrounds sat draped in darkness — the next, an entire city of white neoclassical buildings glowed like a vision from another world. Reporters called it the White City, and those who witnessed it said the moment felt almost sacred.

Genesis opens with a scene far more staggering. Before God spoke, there was no city to illuminate — there was nothing at all. Only darkness over the deep, and the Spirit of the Almighty hovering over a formless void. Then God spoke three words: "Let there be light." No button, no generator, no filament. Just the raw, creative word of the Most High — and light erupted where nothing had ever existed.

Cleveland's button required dynamos, copper wire, and the labor of thousands of engineers. God required nothing but His own voice. Every light humanity has ever kindled, from the first campfire to that dazzling night in Chicago, is merely a faint echo of that first commanding word spoken into the darkness. When God speaks, worlds that do not yet exist begin to shine.