is a plan and a purpose to who we are.
In the Beginning
Our God who is love wants to communicate with his creation, and he does so in various ways. One of the ways God communicates with us is through the universe and the world we inhabit. Think of a brilliant sunset over the ocean, or the stars in the night sky. Recall a majestic mountain towering over the landscape, snowcapped and rough-shouldered, and the shimmering complexity of a spider’s web, dew-dappled and dazzling in the morning light. Our world is filled with beauty, with experiences that take us outside of ourselves and help us to know that there is something beyond our narrowly defined selves.
God also works through the natural processes of the universe to reveal himself. As science and technology deepen and grow their ability to explore, measure, and quantify, scientists are discovering, in the midst of the seeming chaos and complexity that exist at subatomic levels, a precision to the makeup of the universe, particularly at the molecular level. Just a slightly different molecule, or the same molecule in a slightly different position, and the earth would be a lifeless rock hurtling through space. This precision, some scientists say, points to the reality of a designer, a Creator, or an “intelligence” through which the universe came to be. Theologians call the revelation of God through the world and the physical properties of the universe “natural” revelation. Through the use of our natural human faculties, we can come to the reasonable conclusion that there is a Creator. If we only had natural revelation to go on, however, we would miss out on the utterly revolutionary meaning behind our whole existence.
Thankfully, God isn’t limited to natural revelation. God’s desire to communicate with us is so strong that he breaks into our natural world and provides supernatural revelation, literally revelation that comes from “above” the natural world. One of the ways we receive this revelation is through the Bible, and it is from the pages of Scripture that we launch into the Great Story.
So much of a story depends on its beginning. Beginnings set the tone, conveying a context or background upon which the narrative will unfold. In the opening lines of Genesis, the very beginning of the Old Testament (and of the entire Bible), we hear:
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth—and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters—
Then God said: Let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good. God then separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” Evening came, and morning followed—the first day. (Genesis 1:1–5)
Before anything existed, God was. Then God speaks, and where there was nothing, the world as we experience it comes into being. These opening lines of Genesis detail a process whereby God shapes the universe, creating all creatures and placing them upon the earth. The final creation, God’s masterpiece, is humanity, represented by Adam and Eve. God declares their creation “very good” and places them in a perfect place, the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 1:31—2:25).
What could possibly motivate a perfect Being, Someone who lacks for nothing, to create other things?
Created by Love
It is precisely this question that leads to an understanding of what it truly means for us if this God is love. It’s true that God is perfect. Therefore, God’s creation of the universe was not motivated by a lack of something within God. It’s not like God was bored and listless, therefore he decided to create some things as a way to relieve that boredom. Rather, the opposite is true. God didn’t lack anything. He was actually overflowing—overflowing with love, because love is who he is, and love is self-giving. It pours itself out. And so it was out of an abundance of love that God created the universe, humanity, and, specifically, you and me. The very reason for our existence is to experience love—God’s love for us, and our love for God and one another.
Why?
Simply because God is love, and love is to be shared and given away. Love always seeks after the beloved.
Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the beginning of the Great Story in an address at the 12th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in October 2008, and he brought to light a reality that shifts everything:
All is created from the Word and all is called to serve the Word. This means that all of creation, in the end, is conceived of to create the place of encounter between God and His creature—a place where the history of love between God and His creature can develop.
The history of salvation is not a small event on a poor planet, in the immensity of the universe. It is not a minimal thing which happens on a lost planet. It is the motive for everything, the motive of creation. Everything is created so that this story can exist—the encounter between God and his creature.
Think on that for just a moment. You and I are human beings, not created as pure spirits. The angels are pure spirits. Neither are we purely material beings. The animals are purely material beings. You and I are different. We are embodied spirits, a union of soul and body. Therefore, we require a place, a physical creation in which to live and move, otherwise we would be unable to respond to love.
God knows this—he designed us this way! So, in his act of creation, he gives us everything—all of creation. From the densest neutron star to the smallest subatomic particle, everything exists so that we can be in relationship with God and one another. Perhaps sometimes you are tempted to think that you don’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, that your life is simply an isolated drop of water in an ocean made up of trillions of drops of water, and that God has more important things to deal with than you.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
God created everything with you in mind. Let’s put it a different way: Everything that exists in the universe does so to serve our relationship with God and with others. That means you and I (and by extension all of humanity) are the only part of creation that God made for our own sake. We don’t exist for any other purpose. He made us simply to be loved and to love him in return.
You matter.
Remember that, in the process of our creation, God called us out of nothingness into existence. The Lord didn’t just create us to forget us. God didn’t wind us up at the moment of our conception only to set us off and forget about us, like toys that are quickly ignored once the luster of Christmas morning fades. No, in fact, God sustains us in every moment of our lives. The apostle Paul, writing to the Church at Colossae, reminds them of the greatness of the one they follow as Lord: “He is before all things, / and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).
If God forgot about you—even for a nanosecond—it wouldn’t simply be like you suddenly disappeared and your friends would say to each other, “Hey, where did Jeff go?” If God forgot about you, your very existence would cease; it would be as if you never existed at all. Truly, then, God is as close to you as each heartbeat, and God sustains you because of the depth of his love for you.
That’s how much you matter to God.
Created for Love
This is the context, the beginning, of the Great Story—that the Creator brought everything into being and created us so that we could be united in a relationship of total and complete love, held in perfect arms and nurtured to become the very best that we were created to be. This is not the story of an absent, distant God. This God is near, and he has thrown in his lot with us. For God spoke into the dynamic, potent swirl that was creation and said, “Let us make human beings
