Before the First Star Burned

If you have children, you already know how quickly ordinary conversations can turn into the biggest questions in the universe. One minute you’re talking about dinosaurs, the next minute someone is asking how the world began, what the Big Bang is, and whether the T-Rex could outrun a jeep.

And then someone eventually asks the question that humans have been wrestling with for a very long time.

“If God created everything… who created God?”

The other night a friend asked me that exact question, and in the moment, I sort of laughed and said something quick like, “Well… God doesn’t need a creator.”

And then the conversation moved on.

But later that night, when the house was quiet and my brain had space to wander a little, I kept thinking about it. Not because the question bothered me, but because it’s actually a really good one, and good questions deserve more than quick answers.

When we look around the world, almost everything we experience has a beginning.

Trees begin as seeds.
Babies begin in the womb.
Mountains rise slowly from the earth.

Even the universe itself appears to have had a beginning.

Modern science describes this moment as the Big Bang. Not an explosion in space, but the beginning of space itself. The moment when time, matter, and energy all came into existence.

Before that moment, there was no “before” in the way we normally understand it. Time itself had not started ticking yet, and that realization leads to another question.

If the universe began… what began it?

I’m not a physicist or a philosopher, but over time I’ve read and listened to enough conversations around this to notice something interesting.

Most explanations about God don’t actually describe him as just another being inside the universe. Instead, they describe God as the reason the universe exists at all.

That idea took me a while to wrap my mind around, because my brain naturally wants to think in chains of cause and effect. This caused that. That caused something else, like dominoes falling one after another.

But if the chain of dominoes stretches backward forever with no first one, none of them would ever fall. At some point something has to start the motion, something that wasn’t pushed by anything before it.

Philosophers sometimes call that a “necessary being.” Something that exists by its own nature rather than being created by something else, and when I first encountered that idea, I realized something. Maybe the question “Who created God?” assumes that God is part of the same chain of causes as everything else.

But what if God is something different entirely?

What if God is not one more domino in the line, but the reason the dominoes exist in the first place? There’s a moment in Scripture where Moses asks God His name, and the response God gives is unusual.

“I AM who I AM.”

Not “I became.”
Not “I was made.”

Just… I AM.

For me, that phrase started to feel less like a riddle and more like a description. God simply is. The source of existence rather than something that came into existence.

Now, I don’t pretend that solves every mystery. It doesn’t answer every scientific question or remove every doubt, but it does help me see the universe a little differently.

Science helps us understand how things happen, how stars form, how planets move, how life develops.

But there’s another question science doesn’t really answer. Why is there anything at all?

Why is there a universe capable of producing life, consciousness, curiosity… and people sitting around late at night asking questions about existence?

I don’t claim to have perfect answers to those questions, but when I look at the world, its beauty, its order, its complexity, it doesn’t feel meaningless to me. It feels like something intentional.

Like the echo of a story that started long before we arrived.

And the more I’ve explored faith, the more I’ve come to believe that the story begins with a Creator who didn’t need to be created. A God who simply is.

The One, who was there before the first star burned, the One who holds every atom together, the One who is not threatened by our curiosity.

If anything, I’m learning that questions like this aren’t the enemy of faith.

They’re often the beginning of it.

Because every time we ask why the universe exists, we’re brushing up against one of the deepest mysteries there is.

And somewhere in that mystery, I keep finding God.

Lord,
Thank you for being a God who is not afraid of our questions.
Help us to seek truth with humility and wonder.
Remind us that even when we cannot fully understand you, we can still draw near to the One who made the stars and calls us by name.
Amen.

If your soul arrived thirsty today…
Come as you are. Leave filled.