Cross thoughts: Christian ideas seen in Sudanese every day life.
OLDER THAN FOREVER, STILL RELIABLY THE SAME – OUR PRISTINE GOD.
There was a lot of rain in parts of Sudan this year! I took the top photo when my car was stuck in the mud back in 2002. A friend sent me the bottom photo of a road down south last month! Neither the car tyre nor the road were in pristine condition!
The word “pristine” means “remaining in a pure state; uncorrupted; remaining free from dirt or decay; clean”. It also means “typical of the earliest time or the original condition”.
What do I mean by “OUR PRISTINE GOD”?
Genesis 1:1 starts off “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.
When everything else was about to begin, God was already there. He was the only One there, but He was not alone.
He was the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This One God in three persons made everything else that there was and is. Today He still uses everything for His own purposes.
When the car tyre was made it was in pristine condition. The road was well made too. As time passed both the tyre and the road were used. During the changing conditions of life things happened. The big amounts of rain turned the roads into mud slides. The tyres simply span round and round. No vehicles were going anywhere.
As we live our Christian lives we sometimes allow our understanding of the pristine God to become clouded by everything we see happening in life around us. The mess of the world corrupts our view of God. What we think about God – if indeed we stop to think about Him at all – is determined by the immediate things we see, rather than the ultimate things which are true. We say to ourselves, “Why is God allowing this?”, when we may be better asking “What is God’s purpose for us in bringing this situation to be?”
“In the beginning God” lived dependent upon nothing else. Out of nothing our pristine God made humankind and our environment. Nobody questioned God’s ability. What Almighty God said, He did. God breathed life into dead dust. God met one man’s needs for companionship by giving him one woman. God used the couple’s mutual skills to provide family life. It was only when human beings decided they knew better than God they went their own way. That sin (going their own way) brought suffering and death into their (and our) world.
God’s world is no longer pristine! BUT always remember, GOD HIMSELF IS!
“What you worship as something unknown I am going to explain to you” Acts 17:23.
October 2009.