Verse: Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Devotional Thoughts:
One of my hobbies is reading. I love to read. And one thing I have noticed is that great books (at least in my estimation) possess one thing in common – they draw you in from the very first page. Often, they draw you in from the very first line. Who here hasn’t heard, and likely quoted, the classic opening line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities – “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”? The best books draw you in from line 1, and the Bible does the same thing.
Right at the front door of the Bible, there in verse 1, the Bible presents realities about the world in which we live. The element of time, the existence of a God, and this entire world as we know it and relate to it are all addressed in the opening line. If you can read and believe verse 1 of the Bible, nothing else from there on out should give you much trouble to believe at all.
Verse 1 establishes that there is a God that created and oversees the world in which we live.
In the 1960’s, there was a great space race between the United States and Russia. While America was the first to put a man on the moon, the Russians were able to put the first man into space. Upon this man’s return, one of the Russian leaders claimed that though they had been able to send a man into space, they had found that there was no God there.
C.S. Lewis ran with this and said that we don’t relate to God in the way the Russians made it seem. We don’t relate to God in the same way we relate to a person upstairs. Rather, Lewis said that we relate to God in the way that Shakespeare related to Hamlet. God created and oversees this world and everything in it; therefore, the only way we relate to God is by how he chooses to reveal himself to us.
In this verse, God reveals himself to us as a Creator God.
And if God has created something, then it was created for something.
That means we have purpose. You have purpose.
Points to Ponder:
One thing that we all want in life is to live a life of purpose.
But what would be the implications if this world wasn’t designed by a Creator God?
For starters, it would mean that our lives wouldn’t truly have purpose. It would mean that our greatest purpose in life would be to live selfishly, but also, thinking about that even more, it would mean that our lives would become a never-ending attempt to achieve success and maintain that success for our own selfish gain. And a life like that would be a life devoid of joy.
Two things that every person wants in life – to live a life of purpose and to receive affirmation for it – those things are only found in God. Those things are only found in a Creator God who oversees this world in which we live.
What’s God’s purpose for your life? How are you pursuing it?
Blessings,
Zac
