New Blog Series of Ten Big Words verses In the beginning....

Genesis 1.1

In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth.

What a great opening line of a book.  I can hear the richness of Morgan Freeman’s or James Earl Jones’ voice, saying the words, adding layers of depth the way that they do.   

It’s a simple sentence, yet it’s hard for me to grasp all that it encompasses.  Seriously, this includes EVERYTHING.  Dinos to no-see ‘ums.  Glaciers to grains of sand.  Outer space to atoms.  The vision it took to create and piece it together like a puzzle is mind-boggling.  Were there things He made and then reconsidered?  Was the world as we know it His first draft?  There were no bar napkins back then on which to sketch and plan it out.  My forgetful pea brain has a hard time comprehending it all.

As I’m learning about God, thinking about what “In the beginning…” means, has a profound effect on me.  Some days I doubt and question, and other days simply glimpsing the beautifully intricate pattern on a leaf or the workings of the human body can settle me into a place of certainty that there must be a God.  Brilliant designs and a masterful plan... I mean, can you imagine thinking through every last detail of every last thing? 

It sounds reasonable to me that a big bang, or two things colliding could form a planet.  But start adding people who think and love and reproduce, animals (who do the same!), and vegetation of almost infinite variety and stars and the tides and seasons?  It’s then that something inside of me just knows: How could all this life and beauty be accidental?  It’s simply too miraculous for it to be anything else.  And it’s okay for me not to understand it, to simply appreciate it and believe there’s something out there that’s bigger than me.       

Clearly it’s not all rainbows and unicorns.  There’s ugliness galore.  But even beauty and goodness can be born out of pain and suffering, and that, I’m quite certain, was no accident.