If' there's one moment in history I'd most like to have a front row tickets for, it's this...

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And if there had been a crowd in this amazing ampitheatre of pre-existing nothingness, they would of course be wearing UV sunglasses because what happened next would literally have blown them away by the sheer energy of this new force, and it would command instant silence.... followed by a whispered... whoooah.

And God said, 'Lights. Camera. Action'.

And there was light, which was separated from darkness and the light was called day and the darkness was called night. So there was evening, then morning.

The first day.

Familiar story. But actually, there's so many times when I've just read this, without thinking about this spectacular narrative which opens the stage of life.

This weekend I've had the privilege of being entertained by my friend's parents who have come to stay. Our after-supper conversations have left me a little bit spaced out, I've maxed out my scant knowledge of GCSE physics, and been left bepuzzled by the ideology of infinity. When I think about the story of creation as it's told in Genesis, amazing though it is, it does not do justice to the expanse of space and the billion other galaxies beyond our own. No sir. There's no mention of the intracies of the high-tech planetary specifications, without which, we'd all be goners. Over time, scientists have come to realise that there are several critical details about the positioning of the earth from the sun, the tilt of our planet, the levels of salt in the sea, the gases in the atmosphere, the elements in the ground, that are just exactly as they need to be to allow for life on this planet. Not much of this is mentioned in Genesis. But we know about it, now.

The film below is from Rob Bell's 'Everything is spiritual' talk. Which is amazing. In simple terms, he talks about just how huge the universe is, even beyond our accepted knowledge of the universe... and how intricate the smallest atom is.

Obviously, what with me not being a quantum physicist, I appreciate the simple things in life. I like that the story of creation is finite and limited and designed not to hurt brains too much. But on the other hand, there has to be more to this... right? What we understand about the universe - well, we might have some of it right, but there's a lot we don't know. The more scientists discover, the more we realise how much more there is still to find out.

Which points to a vastly infinite... boundless, limitless, beyond our own galactic imagination... god. But not just one who makes things really big. That would just be boring and impersonal. He makes things wonderfully intricate, individuals hard coded with DNA that makes each person living on planet earth... unique. You're one of those individuals. He knows every little detail about you and the 6.8 billion other people on earth. He designed you. With a purpose. In his image. The hugeness and the smallness - go together.





I think we haven't even come close to finding out how big this universe is, or how small. Well. We're finite after all. We're like 2D people, in a 3D universe. Of course, we don't live in flatland, we live in a very real, living, breathing world. But who knows how many dimensions there really are. And how much more of God there is to discover, as well as his inter-plantery playground.