So as part of my reading I do 2 chapters in the old testament. Once every other year I run into the crazy phenomenon (ok so its just normal math) where I read the last chapter in Malachi and the first chapter in Genesis on the same day. Today I just thought it was pretty cool to read the end of the Old Testament followed by the beginning.

Malachi 4: 1 says
Final Admonition

4 “For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the Lord of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.”

So if your reading a book and you decide to cheat and skip to the last chapter and it reads "the day is coming..like a furnace...arrogant will be chaff....will set them ablaze... you would be left wondering "what in the world happened?"

Then you read the beginning, Genesis 1:1
The Creation

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

It literally is the perfect beginning. So what happened between verse 1 of the first chapter and verse 1 of the last chapter(of the OT) that led to such a harsh ending? Sin is the obvious answer. Only we could take God's perfect creation and mess it up so bad so quick, BUT back to the end to the original point.

This is what God struck me with as I read it; yes I screw up, yes I am so unworthy for God to even know my name, yes I deserve all that hell can throw at me, but God saved me. He ends the OT with this.

4:6 "He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse"

...followed by the beginning Gen 1:1.....God created!!!

I deserved hell, absence of God, God restored me, He created my new beginning.

From the beginning, to the end, to my new beginning. All God, All the Time.

-Eric House