Freedom is Good News Part 202

A new year, as man declares it, has arrived.  We have a ‘new number’ to get used to writing – 2023.  So where have you been this past year and what have you accomplished?  It seems that our society delights in considering the things of the past.  Our magazines, newspapers and TV reports spend much time discussing the topic of ‘2022’ and what went on.

Have you taken any trips of note this past year?  Sally and I put about 3300 miles on our Buick La Cross in our travels ‘back east’ to visit family and to attend our grandson’s wedding.  But like all of you, we managed another trip of much greater proportions – we all went on a collective journey of approximately 586 million miles around the sun!!  Written out, that’s 586,000,000 miles!!

That’s a big number, so let me break it down to something more manageable – each 24 hour period (one day) we traveled slightly more than 1.6 million miles at a speed of about 67,000 miles per hour.  And it didn’t even mess up our hair!  Truth is, we really didn’t even notice the movement.  God saw fit to provide us with the gravity and atmosphere we need that allows us to ‘live and move and have our being’ (Acts 27:28).

It’s a long trip that we take each and every year, and each and every year we come back to the spot from which we started (in relation to the sun) without mishap.  How does God do that?  How has He ordered all things such that we do not even take notice of the fantastic journey of the earth’s orbit around the sun?  Oh, some of us take notice of the sun’s progression from south to north and back again, but we really don’t feel the movement.

King David said it like this in the 131st Psalm, “I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.  But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother.”  What a beautiful picture that is!!  God’s thoughts and God’s ways are higher than our thoughts and ways – higher than the heavens are above the earth. (Isaiah 55:9)  I desire to be as David was, not clever enough to understand the wonderful things of God, yet stilled and quieted in my soul.  God is sovereign over all.

So I’m thinking that with the start of a new year let us go back to the beginning of things and take a look at Genesis 1:1; let me quote just the first 4 words of the bible, “In the beginning, God …”  it might be said that these are the 4 most important words of the entire bible.  How so?  This four word phrase lays all the ground work for what follows.  Simply put, NO GOD - NO NOTHING.  We have no existence without the one who is self-existent!  He is the creator, the one who said, “Let there be light and there was light”.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  Let’s spend some time this New Year looking at our God.