When God Began to Create...
On chaos and goodness.
The 2020’s have been disorienting.
As we enter the back half of this decade, some of us might have a hard time pointing to a time where things felt calm and normal at the same time.
In 2020, we spent more time in relative isolation that many of us were used to. Some of us found that calming. But it wasn’t normal.
2021 began with one of the most harrowing scenes we’ve ever seen in American politics. That wasn’t calm or normal.
At least it wasn’t back then.
But with each passing moment, many things became more normalized.
I don’t think much of anything has returned to the “normal” we knew back in the 2010s—back when it seemed like electing a reality show personality with absolutely no political experience to run the executive branch of the federal government was the craziest thing we could do.
The new normal is allowing that same President to foment a riot against his own Vice President and the US Congress with no real consequences, only for us to re-elect him four years later.
The new normal is an absurd brand of lawlessness.
And somehow… someway… there is hope to be found in that.
Because it was chaos that the Spirit of God hovered over before shaping a creation that could reasonably be called good.
Most English translations of the Bible start with the same three words: “In the beginning…”
Those three words from the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis is familiar to a whole lot of people who couldn’t tell you much else about the Bible.
There’s something beautiful about clean beginnings. “In the beginning…” gives us the impression that there’s a clean start to a narrative. And in this case, there sorta is. Genesis begins by explaining how the creation that matters most to us (the world we live in) came to be. It’s a beautifully poetic narrative that walks us through the molding of a planet that could sustain human, animal, and plant life. If you’re unfamiliar (or even if you are familiar and recognize the value in revisiting this story), I think it’s worth checking out.
But that story is only a beginning. It’s the beginning of our story. It is not the beginning of God’s story.
From the beginning of English translations, there have always been alternative renderings of the opening words of Genesis. The Common English Bible joins this long legacy of translations in saying:
When God began to create the heavens and the earth—
It’s an easy enough distinction to miss if you’re not paying very close attention, but this verse isn’t about the beginning. It’s about a beginning. It is not about the beginning of God. It is about the beginning of creation as we recognize it.
It’s the beginning of the story that God invites us to co-author.
But, before God feels ready to bring us into this theater of creation, the story tells us that
the earth was without shape or form.
Shapes and forms are names we’ve given to orderliness.
Without shape or form we cannot identify much of anything.
And so the story goes on to tell us that it is by the Word of God that the world takes shape.
In order to make the world suitable for life to thrive, God speaks order over the chaos.
But chaos is an ever-present threat. It is the temptation that lurks around every corner.
What many religions (including mine) have named “sin” is merely the gateway drug to chaos. It is the voice that beckons us to undo the good work of God’s creation. To be “in sin” is to be on the journey from order to chaos.
And it is over such chaos—such formless & shapelessness—that the Spirit of God hovered over as God began to create.
In the story God works ceaselessly until God can call everything “good.”
After all things have been set in order, God creates humanity in the very image of God. We are the ones God invites to steward creation in all of its goodness.
We are co-stars in a production that often seems to be careening toward something resembling tragedy.
But, according to the very next chapter of Genesis the same Spirit that hovered over the chaos as God began to create is the very breath that God breathed into humanity.
the Lord God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils.
The chaos and lawlessness that once drove me to despair gives me cause for hope when I remember the Spirit who lives in us.
Just because we find ourselves and our society “in sin”—careening away from order and back toward chaos— does not mean that creation is doomed nor damned.
The Word of the Spirit can wrangle the chaos. It can bring light to dark places. It can breathe life into deserts. When the Spirit gets active, we can work among that which makes no sense and create something that can only be called good.
And when goodness is realized, rest is the only thing left to do.
My the Spirit stir up the image of God in you.
May your 2025 be good.
Thanks for this timely word. We are so primed to see this text as something from nothing that we miss order from chaos. These times definitely feel chaotic, and it is heartening to know that chaos isn’t too much for God.
I never knew this (from the Anabpatist article)... "To complete my seminary studies, I turned in a project on how digital communities were reshaping society and how the church needed to take that seriously." It's so cool how God was planting that seed just a few years before.