Freedom is Good News Part 203

God opens the scriptures with the words, “In the beginning”.  I might be hard pressed to find someone who did not already know this.  It seems logical to start a story from where it begins.  But where does God begin?  If we accept that the entirety of the universe was created by God, then where did He come from?

Pondering that question for too long puts my brain in a quandary!!  One solution might be that He is not affected by time; we are finite beings here on planet earth.  If you are reading this, I shall assume you are not dead and so, you have life within you.  If I said that God will live forever, you might not have a great deal of consternation with that statement because you realize your own future is still ahead of you and you cannot see its end.

But your own beginning had a fixed starting point – making it quite impossible to conceive of that which had no beginning.  We spend our entire existence within this concept we call ‘time’.  And so God starts us on a journey into His Word by stating, “In the beginning”. He realizes our quandary and offers us a starting point.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  Many theories and constructs have been posited throughout the ages as to when this took place – I have my own theory but for now let’s just say it took place ‘in the beginning’!  OK!  Are you with me so far?  I don’t want to lose anyone here. 

“Now the earth was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the deep”.  God lets us know, in this second verse, that the creation was not finished.  We understand this because we can see our world is full of ‘formed things’ and we do live in a world with light.  He goes on to say, “And the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”  The agency of God’s power, His Spirit, is now introduced to us!

There are numerous places in scripture that talk of the importance of light and we can all agree that without light (which has more than one facet) we would be helpless to get anything done and so “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” (Verse 3)  Let us notice here that God did not say, let there be the sun to give us light.  No, the sun as we know it was not brought forth until day four of creation.  God, has here, created and brought forth that which is light.

Let’s step back for a moment and consider what we have; 1) we have a starting point: ‘the beginning’, 2) God steps into view as the ‘creator’, 3) that which is set before us is dark and void, and 4) God creates that which He calls light.  So far so good – and yes, God Himself proclaimed that ‘it was good’!!

This is indeed fascinating but we are out of room and must continue next time.