Nothing comes from nothing. There must be something before nothing. Or Someone? Bedtime is often when I face the mysteries of faith. Laying in bed is most often when my mind strays into the abyss of the unknowable. I know, it is probably the worst time to allow your mind to go deep if sleep is the aim. But there is something about lying down in darkness in your cozy bed after a full day and being still and giving the mind some space to wonder or ponder. Mind you, it is not every night my venture into the mysterious occurs but often enough.
In the last ten years or so I’ve found that bedtime to be the time when I’m most honest with myself and with God. On some nights, like last night, I go down the rabbit hole of questioning. “God, who are you, really?” “How do you actually exist?” “In what realm? Is there even space or time where you exist?” I’d like to think I’m not alone and many of you have allowed the mysterious to breach the walls of your certainty, eh? Last night, I went a little deeper down the hole. “God, what’s up with this timeline of yours? It’s been a few thousand years since Jesus did his thing on earth. Even thousands of years more before Jesus of recorded bible stories of your interaction with Israel.” I pondered what it would be like if a few thousand more years go by from now? Will some in 4024 be like, “Yep, Jesus is coming back. I know it has been four thousand years but any day now!” Every generation from the time of Jesus thought it was their time with great expectation.
After realizing I’m never going to go to sleep if I keep on, I look out the window and can see that is bright out but there are no lights on. I remember that it is a full moon. I start thinking about the vastness of the universe and how this one planet we live on is so absolutely extraordinary beyond what any words could describe, especially in light of how lifeless the rest of the universe appears to be though magnificent in grandeur. And it all came from some point in time out of nothing. Actually, at no point in time because time didn’t exist either. There was just nothing. Then there was something. Now my mind is really going deeper into the unknowable. Not only all this matter we can see, touch, smell in front of us but all the matter throughout the universe came from nothing. I forgot to take my melatonin.
Before nothing there had to be something. There just must be something else, somehow. Before time and space what was there? How did anything ever come to be….ever? What was there before all of this came to be? I can’t even imagine …unlike the popular song “I Can Only Imagine.” The life and soul of mankind is just too incredible to have come from nothing. There must have been someone. Someone so beyond our ability to truly know except for a tidbit of revelation. Who are you God? “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep…”. Zzzzzzzzzzzz…..