In the beginning God…
Since time began on earth for man, a story always starts in the beginning. You could say, since an author started the telling of a story in the middle or tracked back from the end, that statement is not true. But we learned very young there is always a beginning before a middle and a middle before an end. There is only one path that a story – any story – takes if told in chronological order. Such is the story of man. It starts with “In the beginning…”
The story starts THERE- in the beginning. Where all things start- IN the beginning God… He is there. In the beginning was THE WORD and The Word was God! He starts it all. The telling of the story…
God is the storyteller. He uses words particularly and peculiarly and in a specific order. Words have so much power that when God speaks the words things happen.
I’m not ascribing the creative power of God to the words He spoke; but to disregard the fact that words were used by Him to create and to name the created and give meaning to this place we live and move and, by His grace, have our being would be to disregard Him. He could have snapped His fingers and all would have fallen into place. But He spoke.
He called all creation into being, named the day and night and sun and stars and heaven and earth. He named man Adam. He gave meaning where there was none. In doing so, He created a capacity for understanding- Him, ourselves, each other; the world we live in. The depth and breadth and scope of His creative power are so grand that it takes our breath away when we stop and consider.
The woman brand new, freshly created, who didn’t even have a name, added to the story on her own with the strategic placement of the phrase: {and you must not touch it: Genesis 2:3}. These were small, insignificant words on their own. Yet, combined with God’s words, they added to and changed the meaning of the instruction and the direction of the story.
And because Adam went along with the woman as she listened to the serpent’s words and he didn’t obey God’s words, man goes from unending bliss in The Garden with animal companions that he himself named and God to walk and talk with in the evening; to dry, hard ground, animal animosity, hard work, pain, sorrow, the loss of God’s physical presence and to top it off, death IS thrown into the mix.
A hard lesson-disobedience.
But it doesn’t stop there.
The Story that follows after “In the beginning God…” is bigger than any one word that we could grasp and understand. He gives His words to us. He places them in a particular, peculiar order to point to The Word, so we will recognize Him when he comes to walk among us and redeem us from the curse that began so long ago with those other words and the terrible result.
History,
His Story,
{His}story gives substance to our existence.
Without it we are nothing. Helpless, hopeless, no beginning, no middle, no end. His Word became our redemption from the unending death; and the repeating of it becomes our story that we tell our children and grandchildren.
And God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” Genesis 1:26a
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. John 1:1-3
There’s more to this… stay tuned