December 14, 2010
From the Beginning
There’s just something about being able to say you were part of something from the beginning. Whether it’s planting a church or having a relative come over on the Mayflower. No doubt there was satisfaction for the Apostles at being the first disciples and pride felt by those being in attendance at Pentecost. I can’t imagine the pleasure that the Holy Spirit receives with each new believer since He dwells within each of us from the beginning of our new life in Christ. “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38 NIV)
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Gail;
-----Beginnings are hard to determine. Decisions are made by reflection upon streams of events, and one event happens by the causation of other events preceding it, as does one reflection happen by the causation of its preceding reflections. Before all the events and reflections of mankind played out, the Holy Spirit was moving over the face of the waters in the beginning of Earth’s creation. How much could He have been contemplating what was to follow in grief for all the agony soon to occur and in joy over all the victory to happen in that agony’s midst? Even before this beginning God perceived the trouble to come and determined the means for victory (I Pet 1:19-20) and prepared the good works in which the victorious should walk. (Eph 2:10)
-----But for each of us who knows the Lord, there is a beginning of new life as well defined as the conception of our physical lives, even though both conceptions were the products of previous events and reflections. It gives me security to know that God did not just find me amongst a melee of conflicting, haphazard circumstances, but ordered my existence out of the stream of them He Himself humbly controls for His purposes. It gives me comfort to know that He shapes each vessel in this world for its purpose, whether for wrath or for mercy. (Rom 9:21-23) It is the joy of my hope that He fashioned me for mercy as one of those vessels prepared beforehand for glory. I can not place a finger on the moment His Spirit joined with mine conceiving new life in me, but I can identify many moments, possibly before then, and after, in which I have joyfully contemplated the riches of that life. I presume His Spirit can as well, and as you note, He knows His joy of the precise moment He conceives new life in each of us, regardless of the known proceedings creating those moments.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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