Monday, January 9, 2023

 

Monday, January 9, 2023


Psalm 22:1-22

Genesis 1:1-19

John 6:28-40


Then God said…


Once upon a time, there was nothing. Not even nothing; there was only a void. There was not even time upon which to count how long there had been a void. Then, The Voice spoke, and in a flash, a helter-skelter of activity, there was everything. Light poured out, and movement: there was earth, and it pushed up mountains. There was sea, and it roared into the deep. Planets broke from masses of rock, and comets zoomed out into the infinite beyond; flowers bloomed and rain broke from the sky.


All was made, and it was beautiful, and good, and The Person Who Spoke blessed it. And He wanted someone to care for it, in the way that He cared for it. Thus men and women came from the earth, to speak blessings on creation as they heard it directly from the mouth of God.


But they ignored The Voice, and got ideas above their station. In spite of having come from the same material as everything else, they thought they could be above it all. And so, because they were on top of creation, everything below them: the stars, the galaxies, the plants and the animals; it all fell into darkness.


But The One Who Had Spoken loved His creation too much to let it just fall into death. So He came, joining Himself to the same material from which He had used to forge the rest of everything else. Having joined Himself, He took that death upon Himself, the death into which everything else was heading.


Having stopped the descent, He rose again. He destroyed death once and for all, and lifted everything up alongside with Him. He joined Himself to that which was dying, and rose again, thereby lifting it all back up again.


This is where we are today. This grand fairytale, the enchanted humanity, the glorious history of creation and redemption: we are in the middle of it all. Jesus Christ is that Voice: He is the Creator, who loved His creation so much He entered into it, taking upon Himself death and thereby destroying death by rising to life again. He also told us how the story ends. None whom the Father calls will be lost, and so our part in this story is assured. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. Fall into that love: we will be raised on the last day, to see how the story ends, and live forever in the new creation, where the struggle is over and there is only peace.



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