“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” [Job 38:4] This question that the Lord asks will bring at once to your minds the first verse in the Bible, which tells us of the time when God did this great work. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” [Gen. 1:1]

Let us put with this another text which will help us to answer the Lord’s question. “Known unto God are all His works from the beginning.” [Acts 15:18] We are His works, for “it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” [Psalm 100:3]

So the Lord says to each one of us, “Before I formed thee, I knew thee,” [Jer. 1:5] How long before? “From the beginning” all His works are known to Him.

Then do you not see that your beginning was not, as you have perhaps thought, the time when you came a tiny, helpless baby into this world? Long ages before this, God thought about you; you were in His mind. This is where you began, in the thought of God.

When, therefore, in the beginning, God spoke out the thoughts that were in His mind, when He laid the foundations of the earth and said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” [Gen. 1:26] you were there, in God’s thought, and therefore in the word which expressed the thought.

Every little child that ever has been or ever will he born into this world, was a part of the great plan of God which He had in mind when He made the world. The Apostle John heard this song, which was being sung before the throne of God; “Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are, and were created.” [Rev. 4:11] But it is the living and powerful Word of God which He says “shall accomplish that which I please.” [Isa. 55:11] So all God’s work of creation is done by His Word, and all that He hid in His mind in the beginning will be worked out by the Word which He spoke in the beginning.

Read in the 139th Psalm, verses 14 to 18, what the Psalmist David says of the way in which he was thought upon and “fearfully and wonderfully made” by God. Then like him you will exclaim, “How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand.” [Psalm 139:17, 18]

Study the precious Word of God that you may find out more and more of His precious thoughts of you. Do not make any plans for yourself, but seek only to know what is the plan that He has had in mind for you “from the beginning.” Give yourself fully to Him that His powerful Word may work out in you just that which He pleases. Then will His will be done in you, and you will be made, as He said in the beginning, “in His image, after His likeness.” [Gen. 1:26]

Is it not a sweet and wonderful thought that the great God, who created and upholds the heavens and the earth, thinks upon us? And not only so, but that as a loving Father He has been thinking of us and planning for us long before we appeared in this world. All the little things that come in our everyday life have been thought of and ordered by Him.

How precious and important this makes each day of life, and how earnestly we should seek to learn just what He wants to teach us every day, and do just what He would have us. Perhaps some of you know the little poem beginning,

I cannot do much, said a little star,
To make this dark world bright;

But I’ll cheerfully do the best I can,
For I am a part of God’s great plan.

The Present Truth – June 30, 1898
E. J. Waggoner

Story in pdf  In the Beginning