GOD

The first words of the Bible are these: In the beginning, God. Our human minds cannot fathom anything prior to that. And that flat- out statement is a leap into the unknown. it cannot be proved, it can only be an item of faith.

Our human minds like to deal with beginnings. That is why we are so taken with genealogy. We probe into record books and family Bibles to line up family history as far back as we can. But this biblical statement goes far back before time began.

T.S.Eliot put it simply: "Nobody likes to live with a mystery." Ancient Romans spoke of a "horror vacuum" or an abhorrence of a vacuum. Our minds crave answers to how life began, how the world began, how the universe began. Scientists can chronicle how it all developed, but there is no scientific answer to how or why it all began. That is and always will be a mystery.

Long before there was such a thing as science, human minds asked questions about those origins. Stories were composed, minstrels sang, wise men spoke, elaborate explanations grew over hundreds of years. But each one depended on some original creator whose being was simply stated. It was God.

There was no explanation of how God came into being. God had no family history.
God's actions could be described. God's nature resembled our human nature in such things as joy or revenge or sorrow. But who or what God is remained an unfathomable mystery.

There is one place in the biblical record where an attempt to define God appears. Moses is pictured as an exile from Israel when God confronts him with the command to plead with pharaoh on behalf of the Hebrews. Moses agrees to go but asks God: "Whom shall I say sent me?" The answer he receives is the most edited and re-edited phrase in the entire Bible. Familiar versions are "I am who I am" and "I am he who is." My choice is this "I am he who causes to be." That is, God is the one who makes something out of nothing, the creator.

God's being is self-evident in creation. And we make bold to say that this universe was loved into being. That is, God's nature is creative love. As human beings, we have the capacity to create and love and so align ourselves with God. . . . or worship God. Our highest reach as human beings is to create and love, actions that identify with God.