The opening lines of the New Testament are familiar to almost anyone who has had even the slightest introduction to the Bible. They are so familiar, that few of us bother to contemplate those lines to any degree.

In the beginning…

Right from the start, we are confronted with concepts that are much more complex than it would appear. What, for instance, is the “beginning?” That phrase would suggest the element of “time,” a concept that is confusing from the start. If God has no begining and no end, how can we define the beginning moment of creation?

Science would have us believe that the universe we inhabit came into existence at the moment of an event they call “The Big Bang.” So, what was the moment before the “big bang?” Was there even such a thing as a moment before that?

If God has no beginning and no end, can’t we say the same thing about time?

Bottom line. As human beings, we are forced to invent labels to identify elements of our existence that we cannot truely comprehend.

We describe the vast distances between the stars as “light years” – the distance light would travel over the course of a year. But, what is a “year,” but the duration of the earth’s orbit around the sun? Then, we descibe that duration in terms of days, which in turn describes a single rotation of the earth on its axis.

To confuse us further, we can read additional lines in the book of Genesis which describe God’s acts of creation day-by-day. Then we might ask – are these days the same as human experience, or did God measure time differently?

So, we may have come full circle.

Contemplating these questions can only lead to one conclusion.

The unanswered questions of our existence are all the proof we need to recognize that God does exist, and we are the products of His will, and His greatest gift to us is our perpetual striving to understand the mysteries of our existence.

In short, we might cry out to our Creator, “Let there be light.”