We lament and bewail the fragility of our existence every time we stand before the mirror or before an open grave. The seriousness with which we take our own reality — we are VERY real to ourselves — borders on self-deception, if not on idolatry. Too easily and too quickly we forget that a few, or perhaps more than a few, years ago we did not even exist and no one knew of us. The greater reality behind our existence — which did not have to have been made — is the only reality, because it is eternal and responsible for our existence as well as for the existence of the universe. It is this sovereign power that brought our parents together, and their parents before them, and their parents before them, and so on back to our very first parents.

The earth and its molecules, along with the blood in our veins and the breath in our lungs, once upon a time did not exist at all. Scientists confirm it and also predict a definite end to it. A question over which humankind has endlessly tired out its understanding is: how did this all come to be? A question that obviously holds interesting answers, although not really sufficient ones can be given — because God prefers to keep it a secret. Unless someone is planning to make another earth and wants to find out how it was done the first time, it is not relevant. The point is that we were made and God was not — which is why the reality behind Him is incomprehensible to us; He is eternal, we are not.

The more intelligent question is: why are we here, and why did He make the earth? Why would He create this precise context for our short existence? Before we can get answers to that question, we must first separate the two issues. Our own reality is real to us, but God's reality (without which we could not exist) is one we struggle to grasp. He is the one who is uncreated, who is not dependent on anyone and does not need to be worshipped by anyone. He exists in a reality that was before our own and will continue to exist after our own has witnessed its own disintegration.

Is it because, as hardened materialists, we must first see before we can know? We accept the reality of a germ we cannot see, but struggle to accept God as real. How unscientific! All of the inventions of the past 200 years have been made in a realm where no one can see. And so we clip the umbilical cord with the everlasting — and thus the insight our souls long for — because it is the soul (God's breath) that gave Adam animation, and not the minerals in his clay. We do not have to believe it (that is religion); we can know it (that is intelligence). After the issues have been sorted, our faith can rest on facts. We can know and believe what otherwise leaves us struggling to believe.

Since Adam and Eve's first commission, which they received directly from God, nothing has really changed. God still looks for co-workers to bind up and care for, alongside Him, the damage that evil has wrought on every level, so that order can return to our lives and to our surroundings. A simple protocol — because He does the difficult part, and we do the easy one.

God's diary (the Bible) offers insight into His motives and His strategy — and answers the question about the purpose of our existence. His love, His caring and His concern for this project (on the earth) are just as immeasurable as His own infinity. Although 25 December is not the right date for His Son's birth, it is the one day in the whole year on which every system interrupts its own productivity and runs along together behind a star that knows exactly where the Saviour and Redeemer has been born — God's GPS and His own finger, which sent the planet right up to the door of the stable in Bethlehem. Let us let our own reality go onto "dim," because every time we do so, God's reality goes onto "bright". A blessed Christmas to all Val du Charron readers, and a joyful New Year.

Groete Amanda Kreitzer