Beginnings part 2
Two times in the Bible a verse starts with, "In the beginning." Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1. We're going to look at both of them. Today we'll start at the very beginning with Genesis 1:1. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." And the question that I always wondered about was, "In the beginning of what?" And the answer is, "In the beginning of the story." And if we see heaven as the mind and the earth as the body we can even take this to mean, "In the beginning of YOUR story." And then we see where the trouble comes in. Genesis 1:2, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." This is your story, right? YOU were without form, and void, and it was dark out. You didn't know who you were. Couldn't know. But even as we see the problem, we see the solution. Because even then, right from the beginning, God moved upon the face of the waters. God was there even when we didn't there was a God. LOVE was there. And then Love spoke. "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light" (Genesis 1:3). We had a problem. It was dark, and we couldn't see. Couldn't see who WE were, and certainly couldn't see who GOD was. So God fixed the problem. He said, "Let there be light." Let there be LOVE. And there was light. Love lights the way. Love IS the way. And the truth. And the life. So even though the beginning was basically just us wandering around in the dark trying to figure everything out--or, if I can say it this way, screaming for out mommys and daddys... because that's what babies do--even though the beginning was dark, it didn't stay that way. God, who was always there, revealed Himself to us. I've been kind of stuck on this idea of the appearance of love. Not what love looks like, but what happens when love appears. And I can't think of a better story than this one to illustrate that. When love appears... we can see things clearly. We get so caught up trying to PUT things into Divine Order that we don't realize that things are already IN Divine Order. And when that light, that love, shines... things are REVEALED to be in Divine Order. We won't stop trying to finish the work until we know and believe (seeing is believing) that the work IS finished. And as long as we're trying to finish something that HAS already been finished, what we're really doing is missing out on what's available to us. Robbing ourselves of the gift we've already been given by trying to earn it. You can't earn a gift. A gift is freely given and must be received. Received and released. And we recieve it BY releasing it. So even though it seems like we need to keep plowing ahead... "If I can just finish this work I'll be able to rest..." what we really need to do is see that God has already finished the work and we CAN rest and enjoy the fruit of HIS labor. Which is the fruit of the Spirit. Which is love. Its all about love. In the beginning we didn't know love. We couldn't see it. We thought we had to earn it. But God shined the light of the world so that we could see clearly. See ourselves clearly. See HIM clearly. See LOVE clearly. Because that's who He is. And that's who we are. We are loved, and that means we can love. We are loved, and that means we are LOVE!