Tuesday 27th December
Read Genesis 1:1-3
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” (NIVUK)
The impression the author conveys with his phrase ‘formless and empty’ is phrased as a negation. The absence of any structure or order. Empty of anything worthwhile. Calvin translated it as ‘confused emptiness’. Later biblical authors will pick up this phrase and use it to describe the God’s judgment. A judgment that involves the removal of life. The phrase is paired with deserts and desolation (cf Jeremiah 4; Isaiah 34). To be ‘formless and empty’ is to be without light and life. The author will go on in the rest of the poem to describe how God provides form (Days 1-3) and fullness (Days 4-6) to an earth that is ‘formless and empty’. It is the positive act of a loving and caring God when confronted with a dark and negative situation.
We should take comfort that it is part of God’s nature that he seeks to overturn darkness and provide order where these is none. For people can feel ‘formless and empty’ too when life is filled with despair and darkness. And God is able to speak into that desolation and provide hope either for those in darkness or those caring for loved ones in despair. When ‘the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters’ we are presented with an intimate picture of just such care and compassion. Moses uses the same phrase when describing the care God took of Israel in the desert…hovering like an eagle.
“In a desert land he found him,
in a barren and howling waste.
He shielded him and cared for him;
he guarded him as the apple of his eye,
11 like an eagle that stirs up its nest
and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
and carries them on its pinions.
12 The Lord alone led him;
no foreign god was with him.” (Deuteronomy 32:10-12) (NIVUK)
The first thing God does with the darkness is dispel it with light. Haydn’s ‘Creation’ oratorio captures the formless and empty nothingness of creation, with unfinished musical signatures and deep dissonance that is resolved with the resounding brilliance of the light – maybe have your volume down a little when ‘Light’ is proclaimed!
