January 6, 2019 From chaos to life! Epiphany of the Lord

1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. 6Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” 7Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. 8And God called the firmament Heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day. Genesis 1:1-8 (NKJV)

If we are honest life is something we do not understand. We can think we do and even explain life to others but this is being dishonest with ourselves and with others!

Where do we come from?

Were we created or evolved?

Does life have meaning or is it meaningless?

If there is creation who is the creator?

And the deep question: Why am I here?

As we look around and see the horrendous violence, natural disasters, slavery (which is now greater than at any time in history we know), hatred, division, fear and ignorance we can either see life as meaningless or if there is a creator wonder why so much bad does happen.

Years ago we called major storms an “Act of God” but now we call them “Natural Disasters”. Is our universe so flawed that it seems to try to destroy itself or at least us? Why is the universe broken and flawed just as we are

The scriptures from the beginning tell us there is a Creator who purposely made everything step by step so we would have a safe place to live and an amazing garden full of life! The fullness of God's awesome power and love is revealed in and through creation – in ourselves who are created in the image of God!

So why all of this pain and suffering? Because we destroyed the good!!! By deciding to be god rather than loving God we broke our relationship with God and creation lost God's protection and began the process God warned us about of dying we shall die.

After the fall humanity recognized we were naked but this is more than being without clothes! No longer were we under God's protection and creation turned against us as we turned against God! We live in desolate and destructive fear cutoff from God, others and even ourselves.

We want so much to pass the blame to God so we can have someone else to blame! If we are not blaming God we blame the creation God declared “very good”.

We see the love of God in that dying we will die which gives us an opportunity to return to the God of Creation and through Jesus Christ go from dying to life. Though there are recent attempts to change the wording history (His story – the story of God working within creation) is divided by the coming and resurrection of Jesus as we see in BC which means Before Christ and AD which means Anno Deo the year of the coming of God!

Where are you? Are you living a Before Christ (BC) or an Anno Deo (AD) life?