Real Hope: A Time for Hope Sample

Because God Is The Beginning And The End

GENESIS 1-3

The Bible has an extraordinary beginning. Everything we see is part of God’s story and world. ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.’ God has always been. He is the centre and the reason. He formed all things out of nothing and it was good. He formed humankind in His own image for the purpose of relationship with Him and with each other. This is what it means to be human – to be in relationship with God and with each other! It was good, in a breathtaking way. 

But we read on, and it didn’t last. God gave His people a choice, and at the same time, a strange figure arrived (a snake), and asked the people to imagine something different, something very distorted. The people chose it – their own food, their own way, their own answers. Everything that was good in the beginning became tarnished. The choice produced pain and toil, evil alongside good, ugliness alongside beauty, and dying alongside life. And the people were driven away from the glorious presence of God. It’s incredibly awful.

In Genesis, the narrative sets up one all-consuming question: What will God do to restore His world and His people? Will He have a plan to crush the serpent’s head? Will there be restored relationships? And how? It’s the question that sets up the entire biblical narrative. 

There is also reason for hope in Genesis 1–3. If God has always been here and if this is His world (and if God is the beginning and the end), then God is present today, in this. It is still His story and we can trust Him. It’s a time to hope today, because God is the beginning and the end.