Where were you?

Job: 38:4 Where were you when I created the earth?

We have heard Job's complaints, and his friends harangues; now, finally, God speaks in answer. And what a question! Where was he, indeed? Where were any of us? Not anywhere close, is the answer. Apparently, even our physics and mathematical calculations completely breakdown as we get close to what has come to be known as "The Big Bang". I will never forget reading in a book called Wrinkles in Time about the discovery of cosmic radiation, which is some of the data that supports the idea of the Big Bang, that we could not say anything about the beginning itself, only at a ten-millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second later, that is 10 to the minus 42nd power. That is a time frame utterly beyond anything I can imagine; it is a number which has no actual or practical meaning to me, only a mathematical one. And the author had the temerity to say that the moment thus described was the first moment about which we could sensibly talk. Such a time frame is the farthest thing from sensible, in my book!

I guess the point is, whatever that beginning was, however we like to think we know something about it, it is utterly beyond our experience or capabilities. I have been told that even the first sentence in Genesis actually begins in the middle! So, even the Bible doesn't dare to say anything about that first moment, whatever it was. Contemplating such ideas, whether through theology or science, is one of the ways that I sometimes get a hint, just a glimpse of the immensity of God, of how far beyond my comprehension, or any possibility of knowing, God is. The paradox is that at the same time, God is as close as my breath; some would even say that God is my breath. It's like putting the enormity of the universe as we know it against the utter tininess of that fraction of a second I described above. What is it that can encompass such extremes? Only God. God -- incomprehensible, beyond all knowledge and thought, yet as intimate as my skin, utterly transcendent and immanent at the same time. And in the face of that, like Job, I have to shut my mouth and fall down in awe.

Prayer: Dear God, I thank you for the marvelous and amazing discoveries of science, which give me some hints at the wonder of Your Creation. Help me to understand that even as I study to know You more, full knowledge is always out of reach, and to bow before The Mystery. Amen.