In the Beginning, God Loves

Genesis 1:1

 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning, God created. In the beginning, God loved. This is the beginning of your life. This right here. The beginning of every tiny hiccup of laughter that squeaks out when your brother catches you by surprise, the brightness that shines from your eyes when you smile as Daddy walks through the door. God loves you is the beginning of joy for a little package who barely pulls herself up to the train table and a family of four cuddled on a queen bed as time freezes with one tick of the clock. It is the beginning of a father’s passion for you. 

This is where it begins. God so desperately loves the idea of you, daughter, that he has to have you. He couldn’t miss watching you pull and stretch your tiny limbs inside Mommy as they grew strong, before you emerged from an eternity of hiding from the world its missing piece. God couldn’t wait to see you curl your tiny finger around Daddy’s in the delivery room and later cry and crawl and stand and clutch Daddy’s as you lunge forward for the first time. He can’t do without you grabbing Daddy’s nose with a vise grip lock and twisting. He knew you’d be hilarious and smart and adorable and strong and beautiful and sensitive and compassionate and breathtaking and mesmerizing all at once in every way.

My daughter.

He LOVES you.

This is the beginning. He loves. He’ll always love. You.

This is the first lesson. The Creator of the Universe — when he thought of everyone who could be he chose you. And he loved.

Can Daddy say it enough for it to echo through your adorable tea cup ears and be captured by your rapidly-developing brain?

Perhaps we’ll never totally understand God’s love until we’re in heaven, but for now it’s essential you remember it. It’s the beginning, the middle, the end, the everything in between in your life, my daughter. God loves. You.

When you wake up from a nightmare of Mommy out of milk, or of shadows, or unstuffed animals or scary who-knows-whats? — your little girl fears in a big girl world, open your eyes and smile because the best dream comes true. God loves you.

That’s it. It’s everything.

You give your Daddy such joy, just being you, no effort at all. Just a smile that flashes when I lift you to the skies and kiss away your blinks of surprise.

You can do nothing to earn my love.

Because in the beginning, my dear, God loves.

And more than you’ll ever know, Daddy does too.