Often it's difficult to know when something started. Like the rain that's dominating the outside this morning. Not only don't I know when it started in our yard, but I don't know when this storm that moved in from somewhere else dropped it first drop.
I suppose I can go back, thanks to modern technology, and see when I wrote the first entry for this blog, but even then I don't know if the blog started at the time the computer reveals. There probably was a gathering of thoughts and ideas and intentions even prior to that moment.
Typically a book has a start, a first word, a first phrase. "It was the best of times..." "It's quitting time."
I've run into a theological question about beginning. It's not when did God come into existence; I'll accept the God with no beginning and no end, an eternal God. It's not when the universe came into being; I'll accept science's best theories about the big bang or whatever billions of years ago. It's not when humankind evolved from whatever hundreds of thousands of years ago. It's more like when did humankind receive a soul.
Could this be the creation story as written in the Bible? Could it be that upright walking animals already existed on earth and there was this moment when God made a special connection with one species and humankind received a soul? Science traces the evolution of the physical structure of humankind and its evolution regarding the use of tools and technology, but what about the evolution of the spiritual being?
There are an endless number of unanswered questions in science and theology and in many cases, at least in my mind, the answers are not relevant; the answers won't change things one way or another. Is this one of those questions? Probably. So enjoy the rain as it feeds the earth and its inhabitants. And be thankful for a warm dry house and great friends.
