What does today’s epistle reading make you think of?

It makes me think of a sandwich! The Alpha and the Omega providing the bread - slices of God’s presence that enfold who we are. Separate bits creating a unified whole. 

“I am the beginning and the end” and “I in them and you in me.” 

These verses, the first from Revelation and the second from John do I think say the same thing:

that if God is both our beginning and our end, then God is also in us as much as we are in him. 

What I think this means is that we can never be separated from the love of God simply because we are made in God’s image and share something of his being in our bodily make up. God is totally and utterly intimate with us at all times. As Scripture tells us (and whether or not we like it); the fact remains that because we are made in God’s image, then we can never be parted from God, even if we choose to turn away from him. 

In both life and death God remains our beginning and our end and as such offers us eternal life because we cannot be separated from him.  

We can as I say, choose to turn our back to him but God loves us enough to allow us to make that choice.Should we do so and turn from him, we are not ‘apart’ from him. To be apart from God would imply that God cuts us off from his being and the God of unconditional love that I believe in would not do that because he would always wish to offer to us that second, third or umpteenth chance to turn again to him. That’s what unconditional love looks like. Never giving up on what might seem to be a lost cause. Always hoping that bad might turn to good and that through repentance all can be made new in the blood shed by Christ. 

Personally, I am deeply comforted by the fact that I can never be parted from God; even if I did turn my back on him. To know that despite myself, I am always welcome in God and can return to him time and time again, after walking away or denying him. I know this from experience as I tried to do just that when training for the priesthood but God welcomed me back after my ‘crisis of faith’. I found that I was still ‘bothered’ by God, even when I did not wish to be!

I hope that you too will be re-assured and encouraged by today’s readings that you too are so loved by God that you can never be apart or separated from him either. That you will know, that despite what you may or may not do or think, God is always going to be a part of you, both your beginning and your end. He is like the bread of the sandwich holding you together. 

Never think either, that God has abandoned or will ever abandon you. There may be times when you can’t see him or feel him but he is still there. What we have to learn to do is to look again or just take the barriers down to allow him to touch us and embrace us with his all encompassing and never ending love. This is what beginning and end means - a never ending bond of love. A love so powerful that we cannot fully comprehend it in its all encompassment of us both in our earthly and eternal lives. 

Yes! We will all die one day, just as we have all been born but it does not mean that we will be put out of God’s love or beyond God’s care. To be beyond God is impossible. We are of God, made in God’s image and containing God’s divine spark of life. We may abandon God by choice or by our actions but God amazingly never abandons us. I suspect God may mourn or despair over our actions or stubborn hearts but he will always love us. He will always offer us a place deep in his being if we truly repent and walk towards his total and all enveloping love. 

God is our beginning and our end. We exist in him as much as he exists in us - Alpha and Omega - us in God and God in us.