Over the month of November, we spent our Sunday mornings working our way through a series called New Beginnings, where we focused on how we follow the continuous path forward into new realities and new versions of ourselves that bring us closer to who God created us to be.

 

In the beginning, a little less than 14 billion years ago, the universe was a single point of infinitely compressed mass – at least that’s what scientists think. Everything that exists today was part of that single point that contained what would eventually become everything.

Then it all went bang, and nothing started becoming everything.

In the split second after that bang there were only particles, bits and pieces of swirling, chaotic energy. But give or take about three minutes into the life of the universe, those particles began to bond with other particles, making connections between all these different parts to make something new: atoms. The universe hadn’t seen atoms up until that point, atoms were brand new. Particles coming together with other particles created something new that hadn’t existed before.

And roughly 300,000 years into the life of the universe, those atoms began to create new connections with each other, began to bond with other atoms to form molecules. The universe had never seen molecules before, molecules were new; and molecules weren’t just new, they were bigger and more complex.

One thing bonded with something else like it, and that created something new: something that didn’t exist before that was more complex, more capable. All because of a drive to bond, to unite, to come together – a drive that has existed from the very first moments of the universe. It has kept the universe moving forward for almost 14 billion years, causing things to create bonds and connections, to seek out new forms and designs, to move beyond itself, to keep going.

There’s a direction to what’s been happening in the universe for all these years. On and on and on, the whole thing has been moving forward for billions of years: it isn’t what it was yesterday, and it isn’t what it will be tomorrow.

What is true of the universe is true of each of us. Think about it like when you made the jump from elementary school to middle school or high school into college: that first day in that new environment you felt the expanse of that space and all that you didn’t know. The work was a little more difficult, social situations were more complex, navigating between classes was more confusing – but ideally, that new environment gave you space to grow and expand into. Yes, at first, they were new and intimidating… but then you settled into it. You learned, you grew – it worked.

Hopefully, you kept going, kept growing, kept expanding – and eventually, it was time to leave that space for the next one, which hopefully gave you just enough space and challenge that you could continue to grow.

Those forms, those versions of you work until they can no longer contain all that is happening in you, all that makes you, you. The same version of yourself that at one time was new and exciting and freeing and challenging, can become limiting and conflicting and stifling over time. It gives you what it can, for that time, for that place: and then it’s time to keep moving forward.

Which takes us back to those particles, in all the chaos of those first three minutes of the universe. What caused that big bang, what caused that one to become many? Whatever it was, that explosion gave life to particles – but it couldn’t be contained in just that form, so it kept going, causing particles to bond to form atoms, to connect together into the next form, the next version of itself, with more to grow into and more to accomplish – and more to become.

In the very beginning – or at least in the version of the beginning we find in Genesis 1 – this energy is called Spirit. Spirit enters and animates forms, which creates new forms. Particles couldn’t contain the fullness of Spirit, and that led to something new. That’s what Spirit does, it brings about new creation. And what was true years and years ago is true now, for us, for me – for you.

 

I’m sure at some point, someone – a parent, an older sibling, a teacher – told you that you should work hard to get good grades. Maybe it was in elementary school, and they told you that it’s because education is important or it’s a privilege. Maybe it was in middle school, and they told you that you have to start working hard now because when you got to high school, your grades would permanently count on your transcript. Or maybe when you got to high school, someone told you that your grades would be looked at by colleges when we applied, and they would determine whether or not colleges would accept us. And then, when you get to college, odds are that someone will tell you that you need to get good internships so when you graduate you can get good jobs or get into even more school. And eventually, when you do get that first job, you’ll be told “this is what we expect of you” and what you need to do to earn that promotion or raise.

So, you do it. You follow the instructions, you get good grades, you get into a good college, you get a good job, and you play by the rules and give it everything you have.

And then what? What is the point of all of it?

It’s almost like from an early age, there is always someone pointing to a ladder and telling us to climb. And so, we do, only to find ourselves in a new environment and someone else telling us that this is the ladder to climb, this one will take us where we want to be. But here’s the problem with ladders: there’s a lot of them, so how do you know it’s leaning up against the right building?

Life would be easier if we had someone who could just tell us if this was the right ladder. If someone could tell us where to go, what’s next, what we should give our energy to. Whether to keep at a project or a relationship that we have given our heart to or to walk away, what to say or what to leave unsaid. When to go and when to stay.

It would be easier if someone would just figure it out for us. It would take the weight off. We could avoid all the what ifs. We could avoid the moments where if we’d known what was coming ahead of time, we could have avoided it. Maybe we’d lose less sleep at night rerunning all the conversations and all the lines we wish we could have, would have said in the moment.

But here’s the secret: we’re all endlessly figuring it out all the time. If you look around at the people in your life that you think, “yeah, they have it all together, they must have everything figured out,” I promise you, they don’t. None of us do, not the cool kids at your school, not your coaches, not the people on your social media feeds, not your parents, and certainly not us here in the Justin.

We all hope that at some point we’ll have it all figured out, and that our life can then actually begin with all the pieces in place. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that.

Christians believe that God is not detached from the world: that God is not “somewhere up there” far away from us or somewhere else in the universe, but that God is intimately part of all of creation. We believe that the Spirit of God is and always has been active in us and in the world and the Spirit never stops unfolding, creating, whispering, shouting, inviting us to come along and take another step forward.

But we all know where all this life is heading.

 

We’re all going to die. Someday, sometime, some place, that is where all this life is headed. Sometimes people talk about death as if it’s the thing that comes after this. There’s life, which we’re in now, and then death, which we’ll be in when this life is over. But death doesn’t enter abruptly when life is over: death is present in all of creation every step of the way, present in all of creation – present in you.

In order for our bodies, for us to survive, death is a necessity. Death happens in your body, in your cells around sixty billion times a day. That’s roughly one million cells a second. There is a process of “programmed cell death” called apoptosis that helps your body replace cells at an insanely fast rate – and it creates the potential for new growth, new life. Old cells that have done all they can do, must create space for new ones – because your body is creating about three million new ones a second.

Some people are adamant, so sure, so convinced that this life is all there is… and then it’s just over. Permanently. Finally. Forever. That’s it. It requires a very small imagination to confidently and definitively declare that this narrow span of years, this brief experience in these bodies, this fleeting glimpse of space and time is all there is.

All the way back at the beginning, the universe began with the Big Bang, and then thirteen or fourteen billion years of expansion; and central to that expansion is the bonding between things, connections forming to create things that are more complex, more capable – atoms, molecules, cells – all of it to create new forms that have never been seen before, and it keeps happening, year after year after year. The universe keeps going, forward, keeps creating, keeps unfolding. It’s all miraculous.

All of creation – you, me, the universe itself – should have been doomed from the start. None of this should exist, probability says that it shouldn’t be possible. And yet it wasn’t.

Because you’re here. I’m here. This world exists and keeps existing and changing and growing and becoming new every day. Those insanely insurmountable odds were overcome.

Think about all the extraordinary things we have learned from science and how the more we discover, the more we realize how much there is we still don’t know. There are always more mysteries to uncover, more to explore, more to learn – there’s always more. Every single time, we learn that there is more out there, more within us, more around us: because ends always generate new beginnings. Spirit moves the universe forward, and something new is always being created.

There is no certainty in death – we don’t know what happens when we die, at least not for sure. There is a mystery about what we’ll experience at the end of life, but no one knew what was going to happen when you were born either: who you would become, how your life would go, what you would do, what would happen to and through you.

 

And now, you’re here – the culmination of every choice, every step, every bit of forward movement brought you to this moment. Some of us wish we could go back in time, relive or redo parts that maybe we aren’t so proud of; some of us wish we could pause the moment we’re in now, staying here, in this phase, for as long as we can; and some of us can’t wait to move on with our lives. But all of us ultimately find ourselves in the same reality: we have to move forward, into whatever comes next. No matter where we are, no matter what end we are facing, each of us are only just getting started. Because ends always generate New Beginnings.

Matt Britt
Director of Youth Ministries

NOTE: The “New Beginnings” series is based on content and ideas written by Rob Bell in his book “Everything is Spiritual: Finding Your Way in a Turbulent World” that has been adapted by FUMCFW Youth Ministries Staff for this series. Bell’s book can be purchased here.