When it all began.

When it all began; a story of the unknown, unseen, but all planned by one who knew what was to be!

The sky was empty in a sturdy but cloudless array. No birds were seen or heard anywhere. I could look but would not understand the loneliness of an empty nothingness, an abstract of what is happening if indeed my consciousness could be reasonable to a finite mind.

A discussion of sorts was begun by principals at hand as to a viable manner to produce or inject upon this vast array that had all the available capacity for growth and a future settlement. Wonder indeed would become a mantra by those not here or things not yet known.

Understand that from nothing comes nothing; yet what if a thought could produce something out of nothing? Would it then be something with which change could erupt in a vastness that wreaks of forever without anything tangible?

Our hope lies in the fact if indeed fact as we identify it even makes sense since our mind is relegated to what we can never really understand or explain as a reality. However, hope to discern something so far beyond the normal manner of human thought is so perplexing that to begin to take pieces of this gigantic puzzle and place them in some chronological order proves to be erroneous and the more we search for an answer the further we get from any solution.

My story begins here with only God existing from all eternity; no beginning, no someone creating Him, just the Trinity in time, yet not in time since with God there is no start and stop to the emptiness of space except no space as we know it as well as no time as it encompasses us. To be sure, time and space do not exist with the Divine who is God. Never was and never will be!

What then this existence as we will never grasp the full meaning of, if ever, and the conceivable coming of something so far beyond the imagination of man’s ability to see or understand why God even desired to create a world just for the creature He would call mankind.

It is here in the vastness of space beyond eternity and time without counting beginning or end that this person we know only as God desired in His Infinite Omnipotence to share His Life and Love with us forever. (see the Mystery of the Church by John Powell, SJ).

Can man even begin to comprehend the depth of our God’s deep and abiding love to establish an existence for a creature such as man? Before anything was, we were already in the eternal plan with all of our flaws, not because of God’s doing, but because of a gift called Free Will. (see my reflection on Free Will - the Gift of….) Here is a paradox of the greatest mystery, yet not a mystery at all. God could have created humanity to do His Will and never reject Him. But, if we were following God like puppets we would never appreciate the treasure of God’s Presence. Life for us is a free gift, as in all the gifts God gives us. But to live with God in eternity we would need to understand the beautiful presence of the Triune God and to share the life promised by Christ, sanctioned by the Holy Spirit, and enjoyed with the Eternal Father. This would become a reality once we sought to find this treasure by wanting to have it on our own initiative, and not by something guiding us in an unwilling manner. Hence; Free Will! As in all of life’s many twists and turns we see another side to this gift.

We now have a path to journey on and are able to go down different paths and this is where man must learn about God, seek His Way, and find the direction to eternal life when there are many obstacles on the road, promising more dark and enticing temptations than spiritual ones. This is a two-edged sword where God calls us to allegiance with goodness and purity while the world opens to us untold entities that last but a moment. Isn’t this the alluring attitude of man’s undying quest to have and never to hold onto? Isn’t this the obvious downfall of man’s inability to really see the true reality of something far beyond the finiteness of human desires and the blindness man lives with, not seeing what God has prepared for us?

Augustine wrestled with the thought of what was before man’s intellectual ability to comprehend a universe so unreachable yet there it was for man to seek not tangible entities but an intangible existence that God would prepare for us if only man himself would throw open his person to the Graces God would always share with man. The intangible universe would one day in God’s time, yet not time as we understand it, become an eternal existence that the eye has never seen or ear never heard what God has ready for those who love Him.

Here then, in the unseen, unthinkable, and unreachable by man alone that an existence beyond ourselves, yet within ourselves with God’s generous giving of Himself would create for man a world so far beyond himself that the inconceivable thoughts of human understanding would dream of sharing.