From Nothing, He Creates

“If we are a people who pray, darkness is apt to be a lot of what our prayers are about. If we are people who do not pray, it is apt to be darkness in one form or another that has stopped our mouths.” Frederick Buechner

"How did we ever get the idea that God would supply us on demand quick fixes, that God is merely a rescuer and not a midwife?" Sue Monk Kidd

"True action, good and radiant action, my friends, does not spring from activity, from busy bustling, it does not spring from industrious hammering. It grows in the solitude of the mountains, it grows on the summits where silence and danger dwell. It grows out of the suffering which you have not yet learned to suffer." Hermann Hesse

It was raining non-stop in the North Georgia Mountains. Layered between peeks of horizontal green swatches hovered swaths of white and grey clouds. Pointy green lines did their best to penetrate the crowded feeling. I was socked in.

I couldn’t lose myself in the vistas I’d come to enjoy. I couldn’t see a clearing, an invitation to stumble into. I felt stuck, surrounded by nowhere to go. North? Nope. South? Nope. East? Nope. West? Nope. Stuck in the center of the compass, just waiting for a good word.

In Genesis 1, the Spirit of God is said to be hovering. Like the clouds surrounding me. Hovering is "a bird word,” says The Bible Project guys, “[evoking] fluttering.” Other Hebrew scholars say hovering is like riding on the wing of a hawk, or how a hummingbird floats.

Another scholar uses “brooding” rather than hovering. And he suggests the word “expresses that tremulous motion made by a hen [another bird!] while either hatching her eggs or fostering her young.” He also says that “incubation” is implied in the original Hebrew.

While the meanings may be layered, something was birthed from the Spirit’s hovering/brooding/hatching/incubating: God speaks. God breaks the interminable silence, “Let there be light.” He quickens the dead chaos into life. From nothing to something, He creates. And He keeps on creating good things.

(Interestingly, some of these themes show up again as the angel explained to a perplexed Mary she would be “overshadowed” by the Spirit, “as with a cloud, denoting the mildest, gentlest operation of divine power, . . . quickening but not consuming.” How comforting that must have been for Mary! Perhaps she even recalled the Spirit's hovering in creation? Link to research.)

So, lean in if you’re socked in, no clearing, no invitation, waiting for God to speak. If you’re stuck in the middle of the compass with no where to go, remember that He can make a way, something from nothing. What might seem like dead chaos is His favorite place to hover/brood/hatch/incubate. Just you wait. Light is coming. And it will be good.

How do you come today? Is there something in your life that needs the “mildest and gentle operation of divine power?” Tell Him all about it.

JUDY