1 ¶ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1 (NKJV)
By Bro. John L. Cash
When I was a little boy, my uncle came to VBS one morning to give the daily devotion. I was so very proud of him, and it made me feel important that he had been chosen as the speaker.
Even though I was only 6 years old, his words made a deep impression on me. In reality, they set the pattern for the remainder of my life.
It was a simple talk that my uncle gave to the children that day.
He said, “The most important words in the world are the first four words of the Bible. ‘In The Beginning God.‘ They are found in Genesis 1:1. You either believe those four words or you don’t; there is no ‘middle ground’. There are a lot of wonderful and miraculous things in the Bible. Some people don’t believe them because they say they are impossible. But, if you can believe the first four words of the Bible, you can believe everything else that is in the Bible. And if you don’t believe those first four words, there’s no point in even messing with it.”
“In The Beginning God.” Those four words DO change everything. If we believe them, we know that the Bible shows what God has done for us in the past—creating us, sustaining us, and saving us. They reveal to us that God is with us in this present time, providing for us, helping us, and guiding us as we live from day to day. They show us that we can trust God with the future, because He is able to bring about the “Resurrection of the Body” and the “Gift of Eternal Life.”
All things are possible, because God existed in the beginning of all things.
I told the story of my uncle and the four important words a few weeks ago at Wednesday Night Bible Study. One of the mothers told me that her young daughter was listening to the lesson, and evidently it impressed her. Since then, the mother has been finding scraps of paper with the four words penciled in first-grade-block-manuscript: “In The Beginning God.”
I hope that she passes them on to her children.
Dr. John L. Cash is the “Country Preacher Dad.” He was raised in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and has spent the last 30 years being a country preacher in the piney woods five miles south of the little town of Hickory, Mississippi. (On week days has a desk-job at a public school, where he used to teach Latin on closed-circuit-television.) He and his lovely wife, Susan, live in the parsonage next door to the Antioch Christian Church (where Mr. Dub the cat is in a slightly better mood this week.) Their kids include Spencer (age 24), his wife Madeline (age 24), and Seth (age 21). You can send him a note at brotherjohn@ilovechurchcamp.com .
