‘In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…’
I wonder if, like me, you occasionally enjoy watching house-building programs such as ‘Grand Designs’ or my personal favourite: ‘DIY SOS’?
I’ll have to talk about the marvellous DIY SOS (and the legendary Billy the Electrician) some other time; because today I am thinking about Grand Designs; where we are usually treated to the spectacle of some fortunate couple or individual building their dream home. Quite often the journey is a difficult one for the prospective owner, and quite often this is because they have drastically underestimated how hard it will be to make their dreams of beauty and luxury become reality.
Of course, as you will know, the program doesn’t start with luxury and beauty; soft sofas, big windows and roll-top baths. No, instead the program starts with mud, diggers, and thousands and thousands of pounds being poured (almost literally) into a hole in the ground; as the builders lay the foundations for what is to come. This can be, of course, the most crucial part of the build; if something goes wrong at this early stage the delays are long and the cost increases eye-watering!
You see, foundations matter.
Getting the foundations right is absolutely essential to building anything; and as a consequence foundations are always very carefully inspected to ensure they are strong enough.
And this is why, as we begin to look at ‘The Big Story’ of the biblical narrative that we will be journeying through this year, it feels right and important that we will be inspecting together some of the foundational stories of our faith: the Creation narratives in Genesis. In fact, we will be looking at three of these foundational stories during February:
Creation, Fall, and Flood.
I wonder how often you have read the accounts of the Flood, of the Fall and of Creation as found in the book of Genesis? They are stories that we may know well, but perhaps that familiarity makes it difficult for us to see them with fresh eyes, and perhaps we feel a little unsure of how to read them, and what they can say to us in the midst of our busy and hectic lives.
Well, it is my hope that in the coming month, we will be able to encounter these tales afresh, and to hear what God might be saying to us through them. Not only that, but it is my hope and prayer that in looking at the foundations of God’s Big Story, we may be able to strengthen the foundations of our own faith, and to feel secure in the knowledge that these wonderful stories give us:
Knowledge that we are created by a loving God and called into being. Knowledge that we are known, that we are loved, and that God invites us to make our stories part of the biggest story of all; an extraordinary drama of rescue and redemption that has its foundation in the amazing book of Genesis… I look forward to exploring these foundations with you!
Every blessing,
Tim
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