The evidence, from studying light from deep space, with its echoes of the gravitational waves (whatever they are!), confirms the predictions of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawkins that something very startling happened when the universe burst into being.
We usually reckon that a second is a short time. Some sporting records are set in hundredths or thousandths of seconds. But this event - the sudden expansion of everything from the size of an atom to the size of a grapefruit - happened within trillion trillion thrillionth of the start of everything! I cannot quite imagine that - but it is astonishing to think so far back!!
While I wonder at the brilliance of the scientists, and their ways of explaining this to people like us, I am reminded of some astonishing words from St. Paul, to his friends in Colossae. These words were written less that 35 years after Jesus was crucified. 'Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him.
He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.' (Colossians 1.15-17)Paul is telling us that Christ shares the eternal nature of God, and was the agent of God's creative activity! So before the Big Bang, Christ existed and now that creation has come into being, He holds it all together. It may seem like the wheels are coming off, wherever we look in the human world - police corruption, political opportunism at home and abroad, injustice, civil wars and much more. But Jesus is in control, and he has done all that needs to be done for everything to be put right, if only we let Him work his miraculous life into ours.'Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body.He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead.
He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him.
He existed before anything else, and he holds all creation together.' (Colossians 1.15-17)Paul is telling us that Christ shares the eternal nature of God, and was the agent of God's creative activity! So before the Big Bang, Christ existed and now that creation has come into being, He holds it all together. It may seem like the wheels are coming off, wherever we look in the human world - police corruption, political opportunism at home and abroad, injustice, civil wars and much more. But Jesus is in control, and he has done all that needs to be done for everything to be put right, if only we let Him work his miraculous life into ours.'Christ is also the head of the church, which is his body.He is the beginning, supreme over all who rise from the dead.
So he is first in everything.For God in all his fullness was pleased to live in Christ, and through him God reconciled everything to himself.
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.' (Colossians 1.18-20)
He made peace with everything in heaven and on earth by means of Christ’s blood on the cross.' (Colossians 1.18-20)
These astonishing words reveal God's plan of saving the world, which has been carried through, at great cost and sacrifice - on the green hill outside the city walls of Jerusalem.
I continue to marvel at the power of that reconciling love at work in my life and the lives of many people around here. As we often sing, 'In Christ alone, my hope is found, He is my light, my strength my song'
Hallelujah, what a Saviour!
Best wishes,
Richard
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