Genesis 1:1

Genesis 1:1: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

How much can one squeeze out of a verse that's so short? Lots. Especially since it opens the Bible.

1. God exists. Whether or not the Universe did or we believe it, "In the beginning, God".
2. God existed before the universe. "In the beginning", when we started to measure time as humans can, God acted. That means that God had to exist before our idea of time. God was before and will be after the universe. (Hebrews 1:10-12)
3. God is the main character of the Bible. The first verb in the Bible is attributed to God, and has the most verbs attributed to Him in the entire Bible. The author did this on purpose: when you write, you don't write without a purpose. He made a choice that before any other verb, God did something.
4. Creator God succeeded in something that no human can do: create. Coming from the Hebrew word, also an active verb, bara, meaning "to create" was never attributed to a human meaning God did something that no one has - created out of nothing.
5. Another interesting thing that I appreciate comes from the original language: the Hebrew word used for God is in a plural form, but the verb is a singular. (ex. dogs is, cats was). This is the first time the Hebrews saw a hint of God's trinitarian nature, where He is both three and One.
6. God is the creator of Heaven and earth. Now, this looks like number four, but its different in that we are looking how God created EVERYTHING from scratch. When you create something, you get the rights to it. God created and has the rights to the earth in the end.
7. God is independent of the Universe. He was before and will be after. We don't create or kill Him.

See how much we can pull from a little more in-depth look? This verse is perfect, too, because it can teach us how even one verse can teach us an entire context:
When: In the beginning
Who: God
Where: The Heavens and the earth, infinite void

(When?) In the beginning (who?) God (did what?) created (created what?) the Heavens and the earth.

Next (we'll see) time, I'll look at the context and the history of 1:2.