What is nothing? The Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition is A: something that does not exist, and B: the absence of all magnitude or quantity. Okay, that seems simple enough.

As Christians we believe that God made everything out of nothing, but have you ever stopped to think about what that really means? Have you ever thought about how powerful that makes our God? It is actually beyond our capability to understand.

I think I’m about to talk myself in circles so please bear with me…

What Does Nothing Look Like

I use AI to create most of the images you see on these posts, I asked AI to create an image that represents nothing. I asked AI several times, and guess what? Not surprisingly, every image had an image of something. The closest AI could come to nothing was an empty room, yet there was a room. AI could not create an image of nothing. Nothing is an anti-image. I abandoned AI and settled on the image you see above, a big, black square. But it is black and it is a square, it is not nothing and it is an inadequate representation of what nothing is.

I thought, well maybe I just won’t use an image. There will be nothing between the title of this post and the body of the post, but even then there is still something. There is the off-white background that I use as a template for writing, there is space there. There is always something, we cannot work backward to nothing, yet God worked forward from nothing.

What Does Nothing Mean

I don’t think we can fully comprehend what the word nothing really means, at least I can’t. It is not an empty space with nothing in it, there isn’t even a space, this is where the empty room AI created for me went wrong. When scientists say the universe is still expanding they don’t mean it is expanding into an empty space, it is expanding into what was previously a state of nothingness. In effect the universe is creating the space it is moving into. In a way, God, who created the universe, is still creating the universe.

When you close your eyes what do you see? You would probably say you see nothing, but that is not true. You see darkness and darkness is not nothing, it is just the absence of light. However, if I asked you what your finger sees the answer would be nothing. This is what God didn’t see when he looked out beyond himself, there was nothing beyond himself, not even a place to put the universe, and this is what he started with.

We look at a blank piece of paper and we see there is nothing on it, but the paper still exists. There is a space to put words or images, the blank paper is not nothing just because nothing is on it. Nothing is not just the absence of something but the absence of even a place to put something. God had to make a place to put something at the same time he made something.

Making Something From Nothing

If I stand you in front of a workbench and I give you the plans to build a model, say a model of the earth, and I give you all the tools you need to build this model earth, and I tell you to take all the time you need to build this model earth, you will still not be able to even begin because I have not given you the materials you need to build it. I have given you the space to create, the tools to create, the time to create, and the knowledge to create. You have the space, tools, time, and knowledge and yet you cannot create because you do not have matter.

I have given you three things that God did not have and yet here we are. All that God had was knowledge, he had the plans, this shows us just how truly powerful God really is, and as I said in the beginning it is beyond our comprehension.

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