Creation part 2
In the beginning God created. If you want to talk about the Law of First Mention (and I often do), we need to understand what a powerful statement this is. The first thing God is recorded as doing... is creating. That defines Him. He is The Creator with a capital T and a capital C. Let me put it another way, "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made" (John 1:3). You can't make something out of nothing. What you can do is create an extention of yourself. When God created the heaven and the earth... He was expressing Himself. His creative force. He didn't make the heaven and earth out of nothing. He made it out of Himself. He made it out of His love. Because God IS love. Everything He does is love. He does things for love. By love. In love. Because of love. He does things because He IS love. There's nothing else He can be and nothing else He can do. God is love. And because He is love... because He so loved... He gave. He created. He expressed Himself. He didn't destroy. He created. He made an entire universe. And in the middle of that universe He made a planet. And in the middle of that planet... He made us. If love is giving, it requires someone to receive it, right? So God made man. In order to have someone to express Himself to. He is love. So He needed someone TO love. That's us. That's our purpose. That's why we were created. We were made in His image and likeness in order to receive and release His love. In order to express love we must first receive it. You can't make something out of nothing. We love (we CAN love) because He first loved us. Because He gave us His only begotten Son. Because He gave us His Spirit. His heart. His life. His love. And now that we know and believe that we ARE loved... we CAN love. Now that we have something, we can give something. That's our creative power--the same as His creative power. We don't have to destroy things. We don't have to tear things down. We can create things. We can build things (and people) up. We don't have to be on a sin hunt. We can be on a righteousness hunt. We don't have to tell people what's wrong with them. We can tell people what's right with them. We don't have to knock people down to make ourselves look bigger or better. We can pick people up and all go higher together. The tide raises all ships. Helping others doesn't diminish ourselves. In fact, helping others helps ourselves. Because we're all in this together. It's a faith issue. If you trust God to take care of you, you don't have to worry about taking care of yourself. And that opens you up to be able to take care of others. Which is the whole point of the whole thing. This life is for living. And to live is to love. To love is to live. God created this world because He wanted us to have it. He wanted us to enjoy it. We enjoy it... by sharing it with each other. By giving ourselves to each other. Love is never about getting, or taking. Because love is giving. That's how we create something that matters. Something that will last. We stop trying to get what we think we don't have and we simply give what we've got--the love that we've got!