Before there was a beginning, there was God.
Before there was a universe with galaxies and black holes and white hot stars, there was God.
God filled this nothingness and there was no void, because God is all God needs. He is complete in and of Himself. He is in the best sense of the word completely and rightly self-absorbed in His perfection. Perfectly extreme and perfectly balanced. He is eternal perfection. Satisfied in Himself.
This perfect God, for reasons we may never know and if we could know would not understand, decided to create. He created the heavens. Space beyond our wildest imagination. He created day and night; the blazing sun and the reflective moon. He hung stars in the sky like so many lights on a celestial Christmas tree. He created the earth with layered atmosphere, expansive seas, and dry land. He made vegetation of every type. he made fish to fill the seas and animals to inhabit the dry land. Birds He made to soar and sing. He gave order and boundaries and His creation was a reflection of His perfect and wonderful nature.
Then God created man and woman. “Male and female He created them in His own image.” That’s what the Bible says. He created man and woman with physical bodies and spiritual souls, and He placed eternity in their hearts. A “God space” as someone has described it. A place in our hearts that only He can fill.
God created human beings to have a relationship with Him. A relationship of mutual love and joyful hearts. Not that God needed the company. He wasn’t lonely. Remember, God is all God needs. God created man and woman because He wanted to.
Unique to man and woman, God gave the freedom to choose. He gave them a will. He clearly drew generous loving boundaries of obedience that would maximize the joy and satisfaction of His creation.
Sadly, man and woman made a poor decision and disobeyed. It altered the relationship between human kind and God. It broke God’s heart.
Even if they wanted to; these humans were incapable of fixing the problem they created for themselves. It was up to God. And God doesn’t need to fix anything. He is everything in Himself. Perfection. God didn’t need those people who broke His heart.
He wanted them.
Man and woman’s disobedience, their sin, forced them to leave the beautiful garden they had enjoyed. Still, even though they left their garden, they were still under God’s sovereign umbrella. They could go to the ends of His earth and still they would be under His sovereign umbrella.
God is perfect in every way, including His commitment to His creation. Not one to walk away from a project, God is perfect in His faithfulness to His people. The path for His humans would be radically different than His original design, with lasting difficult consequences for His creation, yet God is sovereign. He will accomplish what He set out to do.
God, in His mercy, remained committed to His creation, including man and woman. He set in place a redemptive plan that would unfold over the course of human history. A plan to redeem that which humankind made a mess of. And in the process, He taught them about love and discipline, about faithfulness and forgiveness, justice and mercy, all the while pleading with His children to find their fulfillment in Him.
Along the way God sent messages to His people. Beautiful messages. Love letters, you might say. Letters scented with the fragrance of a jealous love. “Please return to Me. I’m all you’ll ever need. I love you. I’ll always love you.”
The message was always the same. Though He sent it in different ways. Sometimes He said “I Love You” in billowy cloud. Sometimes in a pillar of fire. Sometimes He dropped food from the sky and turned rocks into fountains of cold clear water. He parted seas and rivers for them and drowned their enemies. He gave and gave and gave, even though they rarely gave back.
God’s heart was broken many times. His lover was very fickle. One moment they pledged with passionate resolve their love to Him forever. The next moment they were flirting with gods who spelled their name with a small “g”. Sometimes they denied Him altogether.
Yet God is also perfect in His persistence. He never quits. It’s as if their stubborn refusals only fueled His love. God was determined to get His message across; “I love you and in Me alone will you find your satisfaction.”
“I love you. I always will. No matter what. There’s nothing you can do to change that. You can run away, but I’ll be looking for you to return. You can sin against Me and break my heart, but I’ll forgive you if you’ll just ask Me to. I don’t want your sacrifice. I don’t want your lousy 10%. I want you. All of you. Because I want all of you to experience all of Me. That your joy might be complete. For I am the great I AM. I am your God.”
That, in paraphrase form, is the Old Testament message of God’s love for us.
God’s message has not changed in thousands of years. He still pleads with His children to put their trust in Him. To find their joy and satisfaction in Him alone. To return to their first love. God is still jealous and forever creative in communicating His heart’s desire.
Friend, the fact is God loves you unconditionally. You can run away if you choose. Wherever you stop you will find Him waiting for you. You can hide. Wherever you hole up you will find Him with you. You can ignore Him, yet He will never stop paying attention to you.
You are the object of His affection. He loves you with a loyal love that will not let you go.
Ever.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him.” – John 3:16-17
Todd A. Thompson – January 8, 2007
