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 in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).
Then we read that God “blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). The Hebrew word for spirit, ruah, means numerous things, including spirit. God gifted humanity with his life-giving Spirit, animating us and offering us a communion of life with the one who made us. For this reason nothing else in creation bears God’s image and likeness like you and me. Of all the things that exist in the world, nothing matches the dignity of the human person fashioned in God’s image. And if we are made in God’s image, then we must understand that we were fashioned to love and to be in relationship.
We know through God’s supernatural revelation of himself that God is a Trinity—three persons in one being. God’s being is so immense that it cannot be contained in one person. Therefore, God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in eternal relationship. The Father loves the Son and offers everything to him—including the depths of his own being. The Son, out of love and fidelity to the Father, offers everything back to him—even his own life. In this mutual self-giving, this Divine Exchange (which has always happened and will always happen), the Holy Spirit is eternally present—the very love between the Father and the Son personified. This is perhaps the deepest mystery of our faith, yet we can speak confidently and say that God is a communion of persons in eternal relationship.
This is why at the heart of who we are is a hunger—a hunger to love and to be loved, to know and to be known. This hunger is a holy one, placed there by God. If you and I are truly made in his image, then it is true to say that we were made to be in relationship, in communion, with God and with one another. It is in our nature because it is God’s nature.
Fulfilled Through Love
The truth is that our hearts were made for the infinite love of God. God has shaped our deepest desires for eternal things. Nothing here on earth can truly satisfy us at the deepest level. When we don’t know this, when even this very first part of the Great Story remains hidden from us, we stumble through life searching in every direction to satisfy this hunger which drives us on. Sometimes we try to fill ourselves up on good things—family, dignified work, serving others. Sometimes we try to fill ourselves up on things that are not so good for us—the pursuit of money, power, sex, alcohol, drugs, or fame. The reality is that whatever we try to do in order to satisfy this hunger, we will always remain fundamentally dissatisfied and “hungry” unless we come to know the One who placed these desires within us.
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