The View from My Place – “In the beginning…”

I introduced myself to the fire marshal as he entered our church to do his inspection.  Recognizing he was with the pastor, he moved our conversation from the building to the Bible.  He had questions about Genesis 1, which begins “In the beginning…”  and our discussion turned to infinity and eternity.  I told him sometimes what the Bible clearly teaches is outside the boundaries of our human understanding.  “In the beginning” is one of those concepts because we cannot conceive of THE beginning.

Oh, we can understand the beginning of events, like a football game or a movie or, like today, a new presidential administration. But we cannot conceive of the beginning of EVERYTHING, because human logic suggests something has to precede everything.   There is always a “before.”  The field is prepared before the beginning of the game.  We buy popcorn before the beginning of the movie.  A campaign precedes winning the presidency.  But THE beginning means nothing preceded it.  How is that possible?  When we say “nothing is there,” we mean a particular “something” isn’t there. Not “nothing” in an absolute sense.  But according to the Bible, in the beginning there was only God.  Absolutely nothing preceded Him.  That truth sets Him above our greatest thinkers and thoughts.   In the words of Blaise Pascal, “What is man in nature?… The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.”

As believers, contemplating the inconceivable inevitably connects us to those who humbly proclaim, “Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; His greatness no one can fathom” (Psalm 145:3).

The practical blessing for us is in the simple realization that things beyond our understanding and control are not beyond His.  So we can rest in His infinite love, wisdom and power.