The Book of Beginnings.
Isn't it what we all want to know? How it all started?
As an infinitely ambitious college student, I was determined to discover the origin of life. This is why I pursued double-major in Comparative World Literature and English Language and Literature. The comprehensive scope of the studies gave me a strong hope that some day I would surely find what I was looking for. During that time my Dad almost got killed in a head-on collision with an out-of-control public transportation bus. In the days while his breath was precariously suspended between what we, a family of atheists, thought we knew of life and what we didn't know of death, my pursuit of the origins moved from the sphere of philosophy and literature into the realm of medical science. Genetics was just emerging on the scientific horizon at the time, and I became one of the fifteen students awarded a full scholarship in the Molecular Biology and Genetics program at the University of Belgrade. It is that summer that I had a head-on collision with the Originator of Life Himself.
But, I am getting a little distracted...
We all ask ourselves the big questions at some point in our lives or another:
Where did I come from?
Where am I going?
Why is my life such a train wreck? Is there hope for me, even me?
In the Book of Beginnings the foundations are laid out for us. For this is where we see the Artist at work.
Brooding. Pondering. Mapping. Waiting.
Stirring. Moving.
Then we hear the Word of God.
Spoken.
Bam!
And it was so!
If this is not power, I don't know what is. I try this every day with my children, and, I tell you, my word with them carries approximately the same power as a discarded AAA battery.
We see the marvel of creativity at its best. The wonder. The fireworks! The Awe. The Glory. The Joy.
The Rest.
And we also see... The mystery.
The crack.
The Enemy.
The deception.
The fissure.
The brokenness. The pain. The banishment.
I look over these first few pages and in them I find this incredible destiny to be a reflection of... GOD?!!? - His character, His person, His heart and His brain on this Earth! The amazing calling somehow both resonates deeply and intimidates me to the nth degree ... for, despite this noble destiny, I also see the mirror of my soul - my mind and my heart - shattered by pain, injury, lies, betrayal, lust, fear, shame...
In this soil of the first few chapters of the Bible, I find the root of all your screw-ups and mine - you name it - marital issues, parenting, comparison, sibling rivalry, communication, blame-shifting, cover-up, murder.
And, lest we think that our redemption is just an afterthought of the mind of God, a scrambled-together patch-up solution to the cosmic experiment gone badly wrong, in these pages we also see the price.
The battle.
The scar.
The price that the One and only hope for our redemption, healing and life is going to pay... has paid... so that you and I can have life that is life indeed.
And so The First Book of Moses Commonly Called Genesis becomes a place I keep returning to whenever I feel lost, or confused, or bewildered along the journey, its truths drawing me back home like a powerful rubber-band of naked, unsanitized truth.
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