Yesterday, I drove home on the I5 North. As I stared aimlessly at the bumper of the blue Chevy Aveo in front of me, I wondered where the beginning of the highway was. Where was the starting point? And did anyone really start there anyway, or did they all join in part way through via on-ramps? I tried to picture it: a perpendicular line marking one end of the freeway, cars with their rear tires meticulously lined up on the edge, ready to drive all the way from beginning to end.

The Law of Conservation of Matter states that matter cannot be created or destroyed within an isolated system. Nobody knows exactly how this universe was brought into existence. The best explanation that science can give us is the Big Bang, but that doesn’t answer the question of where the matter originally came from that now forms the planets and stars that we know. According to the laws of science, this matter must always have existed, somewhere, because it can’t be made from nothing. But humans cannot comprehend “always,” so we label our universe’s beginning, something we can understand, something initializing and impressive, we call it the Big Bang, and we ignore what came before.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. How can this be? If science clearly states that matter cannot be created, then there is no beginning because everything was always there. There is no first and there is no last; there just is. I am the Alpha and the Omega, who was and who is and who is yet to come. When John wrote down his vision, did he paraphrase for human comprehension? Did God say He always was and always is and always will be? God is the first because there is no past so long ago that He was not there, the last because there is no future so far away that He will be gone.

I reimagine the freeway; now I see the I5 winding its way all around the country, all around the continent, in a never-ending loop. If I drove straight forever, never turning on or off this freeway, would I find the end? Would I find the beginning? Or would I end up back where I started, driving North on my way home?