This is a story you’ve heard before.
“In the beginning....”
In the beginning God created rocks and trees and oceans and things,
swordfish and songbirds, hamsters and humans. It’s a story you may have
grown up believing, or you may have learned to lump it in with fairy tales and
Santa Claus, exchanging knowing glances with your friends whenever the
occasional fanatic pounded a fist or stomped a foot in its defense.
Scientists on both sides battle it out, each claiming evidence that proves
their respective points. I am not a scientist. If you
want their opinion on the matter, ask them; there are any number of books and
films and documentaries exhaustively laying out their arguments for or against
the concept of creation.
I am simply a story-teller. This is the story I know in my
bones. It is not easy or convenient to accept, for its ramifications
shape my world and my place in that world. It answers the one crucial
question that determines our value in the face of the universe:
Where did I come from?
These days it is in vogue to believe that an actual answer to this
question is not as important as what we feel the answer ought to
be. It’s as if we create our own realities simply because we wish them to
be so. I find this funny because such logic would never be accepted in any other area of life:
“I’m sorry, Officer. I know you said the speed limit here is 35
mph, but I like to think it’s 80 mph”.
“Two plus two is four? Only four? I feel like it ought to be
17.”
“I know you said this report was due last Tuesday. I wasn’t really
comfortable with that...”
And so we let the question of “Where did I come from?” vaguely marinate
in the backs of our minds because considering there might actually
be an honest answer is too much of a stretch. Besides, many of us aren’t
entirely certain we want to know the answer....
Whether we have been purposefully created or simply arrived this way has
fueled debates for centuries. And still, the truth of the matter is that we
must have come from somewhere. There was a beginning to us,
a moment before we existed, and then the briefest flash−the
next moment the world would never be the same. Somehow in the midst of
all the biology and chemistry, through the powers of DNA transcription,
translation, and replication, we emerged−uniquely and individually ourselves,
separate members of a common human family.
You had to come from somewhere−where?
I was the only kid in the fourth grade with my own fingerprint
kit. It was a small black case neatly stocked with red and silver powders
and soft, full-bristled brushes. I have memories of lifting prints off of
soda cans at the kitchen table, and while my friends (whose parents were
doctors or nurses) sometimes received birthday gifts wrapped with paper and medical
tape, mine were held together with fingerprint tape. My father
visited the FBI museum in Washington, D.C. for the first time when he was
eleven years old, and he knew then that the defenders of Fidelity,
Bravery, and Integrity would someday give him a badge and the power to bring
federal criminals to justice.
I visited that same museum when I was eleven. Although I had
already heard the stories of J. Edgar Hoover (who my father claimed rolled in
his grave when I guessed he was the inventor of the vacuum cleaner), Al Capone,
and John Dillinger, it was a different thing entirely to see blown-up photos of
them and artifacts they had touched and used in their every-day lives.
The area that made the strongest impression on me, however, was the
section devoted to fingerprints. I had been fingerprinted
before (obviously) and I was fascinated by the black smudges on white cardboard, the crisp
swirls and loops that somehow made me different from any other person on
earth. At the FBI museum, huge fingerprints swung on placards from the
ceiling, minute differences pointed out with dots and arrows, the details upon
which a man’s freedom or captivity hung.
It was (and still is) amazing to me that as similar as human beings are−most of us born with two
eyes and arms, minds that question and hearts that long to belong−we can still be
absolutely certain that no one exactly like us has ever existed or will ever
exist. (Even identical twins have different fingerprints, which pretzels
my brain because they come from the same fertilized egg and have been built
from the same DNA blueprints).
Strikingly similar, yet infinitely different, each of us sees the world
through our own pair of eyes. Our understanding of who we are colors our
view of every person we meet, affects every decision we make, and creates our
own world within the sphere of the greater world we all inhabit. We touch
the world with hands that have never touched it before, leaving fingerprints
that belong uniquely to us and us alone.
The Bible does say that God created rocks and trees and oceans and
things−all living and non-living things. Every human, similar in form but
eternities apart in both fingerprints and souls, were once dreamed into being,
shaken from His imagination into skin-clad reality.
Ahavi and his Mud Man embody a rendition of the Creation story, which
resonates through the Bible. It echoes the sentiment of the words of a great
Jewish king, considered by many to be a friend of God. He said:
“...You [God] created my inmost being;
You knit me together in
my
mother’s womb.
I praise You because I am fearfully
and wonderfully made;
Your works are
wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from You
when I was made in the secret
place.
When I was woven together in the
depths of the earth,
Your eyes saw my unformed body.”
(Psalm 139:13-16)
King David was known for his military prowess on the battlefield, a
man’s man who killed lions and giants as a small boy. Yet the hands that
so effectively wielded sword and slingshot could also pluck poetry out of the
strings of a harp, reducing manic-depressive rulers to quivering
stillness. His eye for beauty reveals itself as he describes his own
creation in intimate words of artistry; he was knitted, woven, known. He
was fearfully and wonderfully made.
What an image! How would your perception of yourself be different
if you knew that you were intentionally crafted and designed; that you were
delightfully brought into being? That the hollow of your cheeks,
the curve of your chin, the preferences of your heart were as lovingly and
purposely carved as the swirls and loops of your fingerprints?
So often we look at the world through our own eyes, relying on our
interpretations of the way the universe functions that we fail to consider how
it appears to God. What were His reasons for creating us? What did
He have to gain? To lose? Why launch the whole ‘experiment’ to
begin with?
Ahavi’s house is full of many treasures and it is clear that his life
before the Mud Men was meaningful and successful. We aren’t given any
details about this life, because it is inconsequential to the story. In
the same way, we don’t know much about God’s life before mankind−the main theme of the
Bible is our relationship with Him; it’s all He ever really talks about.
What we do know, however, is that just as the Mud Men weren’t created to
appease a needy personality, neither were we made out of dissatisfaction or
boredom. In fact, it seems to be just the opposite−the Bible describes
a God so full of love that it bubbled out of Him, drops of Himself landing
on two feet in a Garden.
We see His view of it from the very beginning:
“So God created man in His own image,
in the image of God He created him;
male and female He created
them.” (Genesis 1:27)
He blessed them and gave them responsibilities within the paradise that
He had made for them. His conclusion of the matter is this:
“God saw all He had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)
Jostein Gaarder gives an enchanting description of these early moments
in his novel, “The Solitaire Mystery.” Hans Thomas is a 12-year-old
Norwegian boy whose father expounds his theories of the universe during lengthy
cigarette breaks as father and son drive the highways of Europe in search of
Hans Thomas’ mother. She had left them years earlier, in search of
herself. On a cigarette stop in the Austrian alps, Hans Thomas’ father
laughs at how ludicrous it is that no one seems interested in knowing where
such amazing creatures as ourselves have come from: “We talk, argue and fight,
leave each other and die. Do you see? We are so damned clever,
making atom bombs and sending rockets to the moon. But none of us asks
where we came from. We are just here, taking our places.” He then
reckons,
“We should have read a little more from the Bible, son. After God created Adam and Eve, He went around the garden and spied on them. Well, literally speaking. He lay in wait behind bushes and trees and carefully followed everything they did. Do you understand? He was so enthralled with what He had made, He was unable to keep His eyes off them. And I don’t blame Him. Oh no, I understand Him well.”
We are an amazing species, matchless in form, brilliant in design.
To at least one Being in the vast expanse of all space, we are enchanting,
enthralling, chosen. The Master Sculptor reveals His secrets about us
here:
“…Long ago, even before He made the world, God chose us to be His very
own through what Christ would do for us; He decided then to make us holy in His
eyes, without a single fault—we who stand before Him covered with His love. His
unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family by sending
Jesus Christ to die for us. And He did this because He wanted to! Now all
praise to God for His wonderful kindness to us and His favor that He has poured
out upon us because we belong to His dearly loved Son”
(Ephesians 1:4-6)
From the very beginning, Ahavi had a plan for those he determined to
create. He built a beautiful city for them, he desired good things for
them. He wanted them to be happy and he delighted in their delight.
Everything he had previously accomplished and accumulated, all the articles he
already owned paled in significance to the little dolls of mud brought to life
by his own life. It was his pleasure to adopt them as sons.
From the very beginning, God had a plan for those He determined to
create. He built a beautiful home for us and desired good things for
us. From the beginning, He has delighted in our delight and although the
heavenly bodies of the universe are exclusively known and owned by Him, they
pale in significance to the bodies of dust He breathed into and by His own
life, granted life. We, too, are chosen for adoption, the pleasure of our
company sought, “for the praise of His glorious grace”.
We are unique.
We cannot deny it−if nothing more, our fingerprints declare
it. The Bible claims that our uniqueness is intentional; everything about
us is intentional. We are woven, knitted, known. Not one of us was
created begrudgingly or with regret, we didn’t slip through unnoticed, or as an
accident of fate. Each of us was invited to this party; each of us made
for the Golden City, each of us having our moment on the stone table with a
Creator delighted by our existence.
Where did you come from? According to the Bible, the God of
eternity imagined you, lovingly carved you, and placed a piece of Himself in
the spot your heart is. Men and women of dust, we were made to know Him
and be known, to love Him and be loved. We were created by joy and
for joy. The Golden City was meant to be our home.
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