Hebrews 11:1-3. Faith is "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." By faith did our forefathers receive divine approval. By faith we understand that "the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear."

The universe in its entirety was created by the Word of God. This is an understanding of our faith, something we know to be true because we have faith. It is something that those without faith, especially nowadays, simply cannot believe. Since they do not accept or believe that there is a God (that is, they do not have faith), then they have to come up with another explanation for how everything that exists came to be. As science progresses, and gets closer and closer to the "uncaused cause" that St. Thomas Aquinas pointed to as evidence of God's existence, I find it so interesting to read and listen to scientists as they grapple with this.

So many of them reach the conclusion that there is a plan - that there is no way a universe so hospitable to man and to life could have sprung unplanned out of nothingness. But many of them do not have faith, and so, when confronted with the fact that there seems to be a plan (some call it the Goldilocks enigma) combined with the fact that there was nothing and then, in an in an immeasurably small amount of time, there was suddenly everything (the Big Bang - when all mass that ever will exist in the universe came to be in less-than-a-moment), they try to find other explanations. Since nothing can come from nothing, they hypothesize things like an eternal reality where universes pop in and out of existence in endless configurations, or universes that "bounce" - going through an entire life cycle, ceasing to be, and then banging again into existence.

But we who have faith know that the Big Bang was God's Word - speaking the universe into existence. There was nothing until God "said" it was to be. It is such a beautiful, simple, true explanation, and everything that we learn or discover fits into it and supports it (and always will), that is how we can see that it is true, but we must allow our faith to color our perceptions in order to see it.

Once we realize that this is true, that God spoke the universe into existence, then we realize it is all true, and we are blessed with "the assurance of things hoped for." How lucky we are! How loved!