In the Beginning

It strikes me that God didn’t have to make this world.  He didn’t have to create human life, or anything for that matter.  Debate swirls regarding whether or not God created the world or how he did it.  But there is another penetrating question to consider: why?  Why did he make it?

Read Genesis 1:1-5 and John 1:1-5.

God didn’t create the universe as a science experiment.  He didn’t make it out of boredom.  He wasn’t coerced; who can force God to do something against his will?  God didn’t make the world because he was incomplete; God is complete, full in Godself.  I suggest that he made the heavens and the earth and all that fills them out of his desire to share his love in an ever widening circle.  We confess that God is love (1 John 4:9).  And indeed, God shares that love among Godself (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).  But God wanted more.  He wanted to express his love through creativity and to share his love with free agents who would embrace, enter, and extend his love.

Love was in the beginning, the impetus behind creation, and certainly the motivation behind God’s work of redemption through Jesus Christ.  Furthermore, not only does love drive God’s work but love will bring it to completion.  Love was in the beginning and will be in the end.  What’s more, love fills every moment of our lives, shifting shape through joy and pain, yet always God is there, offering love every day and every night, every summer and spring, every autumn and winter.  The love of God (even the God of love) never leaves us, never lets us go, never fails us.

What implications can we draw from this world-creating, life-saving, future-making love of God?

• Know that God loves you.  The most basic reality of our lives—that we are made and loved by God—is ignored or disbelieved by many people.  Be one who relentlessly believes in God’s unconditional love for you.  Live out of this awareness.
• Look for and lean into his love.  If you believe God loves you and creatively and constantly manifests that love to you, look for it.  Be alert for the ways his love reaches out to you, speaks to you, and sustains you.  And in every season of life, whether on a bright mountaintop or in a bleak valley, lean into the steadfast love of the Lord.

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