Beginnings - 2

 

Beginnings -2

Beginnings are strange and mysterious things. They're awesome. They're unpredictable. When we're in a place of beginnings, small acts lead to big effects, often unforeseen effects, unintended consequences.

Science has been arguing about beginnings ever since I can remember, and before that for a long time as well, with ever-changing theories. Big bangs and exactly what they were like seem to come and go and change.

And similarly the Bible tells many different stories of beginnings, and these are awesome, mysterious. For example there's the very beginning of Genesis, Genesis One, where the Spirit hovers over the water, before God speaks the creative word of “Let there be light”. But then there's another beginning, in Genesis Two, four, in which the world is a barren, featureless plain, and God comes down and makes man from clay and breathes life into his nostrils. And indeed, there's another beginning again, in John's Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word”.

And if there are many beginnings, there are many more re-beginnings. The Bible is absolutely chock full of re-beginnings - from Noah coming out of the boat after the flood, right through all the stories of the people of Israel, with God re-beginning with them again and again, right up to the culmination in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the ultimate re-beginning – God made man brought back to life.

And while there is much mystery in beginnings, there are also certain patterns that we can see, which we can discern in the Bible, wisdom that we can glean from it. Before God speaks let there be light, the Spirit hovers, and before Jesus, there's John the Baptist preparing the way. And before we have beginnings, there's always a time of preparation, a preparing of the soil, a digging it over and removal of weeds. Getting things ready, getting things fit for the moment when God will act creatively.

Which God then does. God's action always tends to seem brief, decisive, at just the right moment. It's fundamentally God's work. God does beginnings.

But all of this work, preparation, planting of seeds, all of this seems always to be surrounded by attentive waiting. There's a sense of silence before. What happens before God works? There's silence. But not any old silence, not the silence of not knowing, the silence of waiting on tenterhooks, expecting something extraordinary to happen.

So,if we wish to be part of God's new beginnings, that he is continually reworking in his way, we need to learn, to learn to wait, attentively, on what God is up to. To still our minds which are always so full of our own concerns,our own anxieties, our own plans; and instead, to wait on God's plans, on what God is doing here, now, in front of us.

And to do that, we need to prepare the soil of our souls. We need to wean out of our vices, our cruelty, our selfishness, our pride, but most of all our amazing ability to distract ourselves, to go off into something that isn't really relevant and doesn't really matter; and to notice that it's there. So that then our soil of our souls can be enriched with prayer, with scripture, with service to others. So that we are then ready.

So when God works in our lives to plant his creative work deep in us then that work can grow into a deep active love that God calls us to. A love of Him, a love of his creation, a love of the forgotten and marginalised. Because in the beginning, God spoke a word of creative love into the silence. If we listen carefully now, we can still hear its echoes throughout creation. And if you hear those echoes, they will change your life. And you will be the new beginning.

Adam Boulter

Broadcast on RCF Poitou 15 Jan 2023