Day 2: The Beginning, a Very Good Place to Start

"Let's start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start," sang Julie Andrews at the beginning of The Sound of Music's Do, Re, Mi.  And so we shall begin this month of posts on abandoning the clamor of self-will and becoming more ourselves than ever,

at the beginning.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.Genesis 1:1 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  John 1:1

The beginning.

Before creation, God was present - Father, Son, and Spirit.  Then, by His word, he spoke creation into existence, and crowned it all by creating man in His image.  It was good.

Right now, a baby is being knit together in my womb.  I feed my body and rest it at night (and sometimes in the middle of the afternoon), but I have had nothing to do with the intricate designing of the being within me.  We simply wait until her birthday to meet her and see what the Lord has put together.  Some of her we will get to know right away, admiring those little features: eyes, ears, nose, mouth, fingers, toes.  Other ways that God has knit her will be revealed later as her personality and gifts emerge with the increase of expression and speech.

God is our beginning.  He is our Creator.

Sure, there are many life experiences that influence who we become and how we think about the world, but from the beginning, we were created to be in relationship with our Creator.  Tragically, this got all messed up when the forbidden fruit was eaten.  The relationship was broken.  But it didn't change the fact that we were meant to live in relationship with our Creator ... It just meant a little something would need to be done to set things right again:

Rebirth.

A new  beginning.

The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.  We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, full of grace and truth.  To all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God -- children born not of natural decent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. 

John 1: 14, 12-13

To come fully alive as a human being, we must be born into our earthy family.  To come fully alive as God's children, we must be reborn into God's family.

That is the beginning.

A very good place to start.

The only place to start. 

I guess that makes the question of the day:  Have you made that start?