Beginnings

The beginning.  Where every story starts is the beginning.  We try to be artistic and begin in the middle and do flashbacks, but the middle of the story makes no sense without the beginning.  So the beginning is where we begin as we look at God's story, and how our story connects to God's story.  This first week we look at three main parts of the Story:

1. Creation
2. Decreation
3. Destruction

Everything else in God's Story comes back to these events. 

• Knowing there is a creator gives us a completely different understanding of the world and the purposes of humanity.  
• Knowing that humans are designed with the image of God makes humanity different than all other animals, possessing the possibility of a relationship with the One whose image we bear and holding the responsibilities that go with that relationship.
• Knowing that the best of humanity can fail reminds us that we cannot save ourselves but we need a Savior.
• Knowing that there is consequence to disobedience should remind us of the seriousness with which we need to listen to God's words to us.

The foundations of the world lay with these events.  As we seek to understand these events, the issues of our day will make much more sense.

The Story Begins...

At Judson we begin a 31-week chronological journey through the Bible, with the goal to help individuals know more intimately God's story, and how to align our Story with God's story.  Each week I will be blogging twice - early in the week as a recap of the past week's message and later in the week to look ahead to the next chapter of God's Story.

I find it quite interesting that God's story begins with God creating all things culminating in the creation of man in God's image, and yet man spends so much time trying to create God in man's image.  I often hear people describing God and God's desires for our lives in contradiction to the Bible, which is our canon, or measure and rule of faith. We think God should be like this.  Or we feel that God would do that.  And yet, those same people would not read the Bible.  And if they did they will often shrug off the passages that contradict their understandings and focus on what they think or feel. 

One quick glance at the Old Testament and you would see a consistent message not to create or follow Gods of our own making.  We may not carve images of wood or stone and physically bow down to them, but we do follow the gods we create based on what we want God to be like.  Maybe it is time to read the whole story so that instead of creating and re-creating God to fit into our story the way we want, we can discover God's story and align our story to God's Story.

This week's readings are: Genesis 1-4 and Genesis 6-9.