In the beginning.
Before the ticking of the first clock—before time itself—there was only The Echo. It did not bounce off walls, for there were no walls. It did not travel through the air, for there was no atmosphere. It emanated from within the heart of the silence, loaded with an astonishingly beautiful potential.
Let there be light.
In that very moment—at the utterance of those first divine words—the silence split apart. Not a violent collision of matter or the big bang of a cosmic explosion, but by a breath, a spoken intent.
The Echo took form. It pushed out into the absolute nothingness of the dark, an energised narrative that shattered the void.
Where the Word traveled, reality took form.
The Word spoke stars—and trillions of burning spheres ignited in the deep, cold expanse.
The Word spoke waters and land—and oceans rushed into existence, cradling a brand-new earth.
Every blade of grass, every mighty tree, every living creature that roams the face of the earth, each a syllable perfectly spoken.
The Word spoke humanity—and the image of the Creative One Himself was brought to life from the very dust of the ground, man and woman.
It was as if the universe was a grand poem, and the Word was the voice that read it aloud.
Centuries rolled by, the poem grew complex. The voices of humanity became loud, a discordant static of grief, ambition, and broken promises.
They forgot the language of the garden. They forgot how to hear the Word in the rustle of the leaves or the turning of the tides, or the soft whisper of the wind.
The world grew cold, cloaked in a different kind of darkness—not the empty dark before creation—but a heavy, blind darkness of the soul.
The Word watched.
The same Word that had stretched the canvas of the cosmos, now looked upon a dimming planet. But The Echo was not lost.
In a quiet stable, in a forgotten town called Bethlehem, the ancient narrative was re-born.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The infinite, boundless Voice that had spoken galaxies into existence gathered itself into a tiny, fragile space. The Eternal Echo that spoke all that exists into reality was now heard in the soft, fragile cry of a newborn baby.
He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognise Him.
As He grew, He walked the dusty roads of the very earth His own speech had shaped. When He spoke, the old poetry of Genesis rippled through the air. To the stormy sea, He whispered, “Peace, be still,” and the waters remembered the voice that had separated them from the dry land on the third day.
To a man born blind, He spat on the ground and made mud, applying it to his eyes, a deliberate Echo of the day He had formed humanity from the dust of the ground.
And to his friend—recently deceased and buried in a tomb of stone—he spoke words of life, “Lazarus, come out!“
He was the Light shinning in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome Him.
And then, on a Friday afternoon, stretched out on a beam of wood cut from a tree His own voice had sustained, the Word prepared to speak His final line.
The sun stood still, the earth shook, and a thick and suffocating darkness hovered over the threshold of all creation, mimicking the void before that first day long ago.
He breathed out a single, definitive phrase, “It is finished.”
Then the Word fell silent.
He was laid in a tomb, carved into the stone of the earth He had made. For three days, the cosmos held its breath. The poem seemed to have ended in a tragedy.
But a Word spoken by the Divine cannot return void.
On the dawn of the first day of the week, an new Echo was heard through the garden. The stone rolled away, and with the quiet power of a new creation bursting forth, the Word stepped out into the morning sun. As it was in the beginning, the darkness was banished by the light, and the Word of Life breathed once again on all creation.
The Echo is alive!
And if you dare to listen—if you have ears to hear— you will hear it calling out new names, speaking new life into existence.
The Story is not ended—it is still being told.
Image credit: Echoes of Grace, Matt Fricker