The God Who is There
In the beginning of all we know was the Word. It started with him. It all burst forth from his everlasting lips, echoing down the canyons of time and filling up the caverns of the earth, planting the minerals in their proper place, sowing seeds under fresh soil, bringing forth all kinds of life from the wonder of his imagination. None of it was frivolous. There together with creativity is great wisdom. All parts make a magnificent whole. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And what we see is his glory.
This is, of course, what we learn from the opening pages of the Bible and from the opening sentences of John’s account of the gospel. The Bible is many things. Boring is not one of them. The beauty of the words alone is enough for endless ruminations, but the externals to which the words take us really leave us in awe. It is the whole world in view—the world whose sunsets never disappoint, whose oceans seemingly know no end, whose storms still shake our bones, and whose land teeming with life makes it home. We see his glory there—in the threreness of it all.
It didn’t have to be this way. He had no reason to create. He wasn’t missing something in his life. It was out of his good pleasure that everything came forth. He didn’t need it. He was fine without the planets and the stars. He wasn’t thirsty before there was rain. He didn’t hunger for the fruit of the land. He had all he needed and wanted within himself, in the Triunity of his own being. The Father and the Son and the Spirit danced eternally together in the radiance of glory.
Yet God created the heavens and the earth and the things in the heavens and the earth. God created a world that goes on creating new things all the time. But it is not out of control. He knows everything that is. He knows the number of hairs on the heads of every person to ever live. I suppose he knows the number on every mammal too, and every feather on every bird, and every scale on every reptile and fish. It is all known to him because he is not a creator who winds things up and steps away; he is a creator who keeps his eye even on the sparrow, who knows our comings and goings. He watches and sees. He knows the deep things beneath the outward things. He sees the seeds first bursting forth of life beneath the surface. He sees the secrets of every human heart. He sees the hidden sorrows and the silent heart tears. He hears every groan and feels every pain. He knows the laughter of the children playing and the joy of the elderly’s long life. He is life, and in him is life.
In the beginning was the Word, and in the end, there he will be too, for God has no end, just as he has no beginning. He just is. He is there. He always has been. He always will be. He’s here right now in the stuff of your life. He was in yesterday’s stuff, and he’ll be in tomorrow’s too. Because he is he is never not, which means from beginning to end, you are surrounded by his love, wrapped up in his care, upheld by his ever-watching eye. In the thereness of your life is the God who is magnificently, overwhelmingly, everlastingly there.
