As I indicated when I started sharing the contents of this little book, the authors have identified Smart and Stupid ways to think about God. Last week I shared the first Stupid way. This week I would like to share the first Smart way.

A smart way to think about God begins with God Himself. Because God IS the beginning. The beginning of the beginning. The absolute beginning. It’s well worth repeating

A deceptively simple notion, it is a monumental concept. It means that before anything existed, there was still something. And that something is what we call God. Before the big bang, before the space-time continuum, before energy and matter, our universe, or any universe. God was there.

It means that this universe didn’t just happen out of nothing. Creation is no chance occurrence or coincidence. No celestial hiccup. It happened out of God.

God is the Origin of all existence. He pointed the universe in one direction. Shot what physicists call the arrow of time. Established a flow. From beginning to end.

Somehow, He is responsible for all that exists, has ever existed, will ever exist, or could ever exist. Somehow the universe – past, present and future – is inextricably joined to God’s Being.

God is a Being that is so basic, so fundamental, it cannot be split into simpler components. It cannot be placed in an accelerator or   reduced to one simple particle.

God is an indivisible Whole – a Whole that is beyond all the opposites of our reality. God is a Whole that is beyond protons and electrons – positives and negatives. And yet, somehow, all things are part of Him. Every force in the universe.

His is a Being of Infinite Potential. All possibilities are part of His Nature. Everything conceivable and also inconceivable. This is God!

He is a God that cannot be made out of stuff. His atoms were never part of galactic nebulae, or the dust of comets. He never simmered in the cosmic crockpot that gave birth to the universe. He was and is the cook of all things.

He is a God that cannot be shaped by the hands of time or the hands of man. He can never be fashioned in our image. He can hardly be imagined. He existed before imagination.

This is the only God that could ever be a real God. The only kind of God able to leap over all idols. This is the only kind of God that can never be proven false. This is the God made known by Judaism, popularized by Christianity and Islam. This is the only God conceptualized by those embracing monotheism. This is the God we believe in