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

– Genesis 1:1

While it is tempting for most Christians to jump into a debate on whether the six days of Creation were literal, whether the earth is ‘young’ or ‘old’, or some other such issue; we should first note something else about God.

See if you can see it for yourself:

In the beginning, God created…

Do you see?

God was there in the beginning… In fact, he is noted as creating the heavens and the earth in the beginning. And when we look carefully at this verse, we can see that the beginning itself is the creation of the heavens and the earth. It is not as though time started, like a stopwatch, when someone yelled “go”, and then the heavens and the earth were created as a secondary event (as the runner starts to run). It is more that the creation of these things was God yelling “go”, that their appearance out of nothing was the beginning itself. The stopwatch starts as soon as the runner decides to start running.

The big implication for this is that God was there, if we can say it in such a way, before the beginning. He, who caused the beginning, existed prior to that event that marked the beginning of time, the beginning of our universe. The runner was waiting patiently before the start of the race on his marks.

One fascinating part of this reflection is that we lack the language to speak of God’s existence prior to existence. We speak of something that existed in the time before time existed, yet, this is nonsense. How can there even be a ‘before’ if there is no time to reference it? The same is true about the location. There is no physical location for God to exist in and there is not even ‘empty space’ as space itself has not yet been made by God.

Let me state plainly what your spiritual response to this concept should be. You should be in awe of God, your mind should be blown, you should realise the futility of comparing the eternal God to yourself. You are merely a created being who needs time in the universe in order to function. You should be humbled and God should be magnified in your consideration of this.

The futility of self-worship should also be obvious, as should the clear need for a Creator who is beyond our existence of cause and effect. Yet these are two things that mankind gets wrong over and over throughout all of history.

May these words be a blessing to you.

In Christ

Sam