The World and the Mind of God

In the beginning . . .

In the beginning God . . .

In the beginning  God created the heavens and the earth . . .

I believe that this is the beginning of the story. The beginning of everything we know. Before the beginning, though, before the heavens and the earth, what was there?

There was only God.

God existing in eternity with no beginning and no end. Only God. There was not God and . . . There was not God floating in space. There was no space. There was only God.

For God to create, for Him to bring something other than Himself into existence, he had to make room. In a sense He had to shrink. For the first time, there was God and . . . There was  a place where God was not.

As God began to create, everything made had to come out of a part of Himself. Creation was not imagined outside of God. Every particle of it was a thought dreamed and then made real within the essence of God.

This is important because as human beings we tend to categorize various parts of the universe as secular or sacred. We imagine that a sunset or the graceful flight of an eagle shows the handiwork of God, but then we do not see His creativity and glory revealed in so many other parts of creation, yet it is all from Him.

Sunset. Tides. The changing color of leaves. Dinosaurs. Music. The balance of ecological systems. The circulatory system. Gravity. The vastness of the universe. Blood. Water. Dance. Color. Racial distinctions. Plutonium. Fingernails. Giraffes. Tastes. Sex. Atomic Structure. Culture. Wood. Jellyfish. The speed of light. Curiosity. Drama. Mosquitos. Clouds. Mountains. Cooking. Chemical properties. Lasers. Seeds. Wild horses. Exploration. Adventure. Milk. Wind. Fire.

Every bit of it was God’s idea, and we should understand more of His character when we look at the world around us.

Don’t confuse this with the idea that God is in everything (pantheism). All creation is a revelation of God, not an incarnation of Him. As we look around us, we should understand Him more, just like one understands an artist by looking at her work or an author by reading his books.