In the beginning, God...

Good morning!  Welcome to Wednesday in the Pastor’s Workshop.  It’s great to be with you today!

Our message for this week is: “Begin with Basics: Starting Right”.  Our Scripture texts are Genesis 1:1-2 and I John 4:7-9.  Our key thought is: “When you start right, things go better and when things go better, you finish well”.  The key is starting right.  And the Scriptural guidance to “starting right” is from Genesis 1:1, “In the Beginning, God…”

On Wednesday we look at the context of the text.  We want to find out about the world into which the Word was spoken. 

Scientifically we can’t go back to “Creation”.  We’ll leave that up to the physicists.

But existentially we can go back.  The Bible takes us there.  I love the paraphrase of Genesis 1:1-2 provided by “The Message”.  Eugene Peterson, author of “The Message”, in his opening describes the creation setting like this:  “Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness… a watery abyss.”  How graphic a picture of a time “Before the Beginning”, a time before God went to work!

For the Bible what separates us from the “nothingness, emptiness, blackness and the abyss” is God.  “In the Beginning, God…” What a blessing to know the presence of God stands between us and that “nothingness”.

Genesis 1:2 provides a Creation contrast for “In the Beginning, God…”  But there are contemporary contrasts as well.  There are those who say there is no God.  These are the atheists. They don’t believe in the presence of the Transcendent.  In doing so they cut themselves off from the power of the truly Transformative.  And then there are those who don’t know if there is a God or not.  They struggle with the notion of “knowing” and of faith.  They are the agnostics.  As I think of them I remember Pascal’s Wager.  Pascal was a famous French mathematician, philosopher and theologian from the seventeenth century.  His wager (stated in layman’s terms) went something like this:  If you don’t know whether there is a God or not, what do you have to lose in believing?  And what do you have to gain in believing?  In believing in God, even if there is not a God, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. You end up living a life of love.  In not believing in God, if there is a God, you have everything to lose and nothing to gain. You miss out living in the saving grace of Jesus.  There’s a lot to think about in “the Wager”.

Fortunately, or maybe more accurately, “gracefully” for us, we do believe in God and affirm God is a God of love (I John 4:8).  That truth of Genesis 1:1 and I John 4:8 is a truth not only for the Beginning of Creation, but for all the beginnings of our lives. When we begin with that basic, we are starting right!

As you think on the contrasts of the Scriptures today I’d invite you to reflect on the question: “What would it be like if I was not able to affirm, “In the Beginning, God…” and “In all my beginnings, God…”?  What would that nothingness, emptiness, abyss be like?  And then give thanks this is not our faith and not God’s truth.

I am grateful to be with you in the beginning of this new series, the beginning of this day and the beginning of how God will work the love of Christ into our lives through “Begin with Basics: Starting Right”. 

In that blessing, I’ll let you get to work.  I look forward to seeing you tomorrow in the Pastor’s Workshop.

 Prayer:  Gracious God, thank you for the blessing of starting right and beginning each day with You.  Thank you for the way this faith connects us with Your Transcendent Presence and Transformative Power.  Help us to affirm that gift of grace in our lives every week, as we begin with worship.  Help us to claim that blessing every day, as we begin with prayer.  Lead us forward In Your ways of truth, so that we might live more fully and faithfully with You.  In Jesus’ name we pray.