Chaos and the Deep
In preparing for my Bible class entitled The Glorious Ruin: Creation, Beauty, and Humanity's Deep Connection to the Character of God, I've been considering the notion of God's working over the "formless and void" earth as described in Genesis 1. It's been especially apt timing because there are many days when the state of my mind and/or spirit could be described fairly accurately as chaotic, perhaps morer formless than void, but still, lacking in the sort of beautifully designed order implied in the descriptions of God working out the beginning of things.
It's a temptation to overspiritualize the notion of God hovering over our chaos, ready to speak the light of good design into it, but we have to be careful not to miss the fact that this ordering is in the deepest nature of material reality as well. The spiritual state of our heart gives birth to the material reality around us, as far as our own choices are concerned, and entropy guarantees that there is a constant gravitational pull toward that chaotic state. How foolish we are to think that we can outrun the inevitable disorder that seeps into our lives like slowly rising floodwaters.
But this is the message of the gospel: what did Jesus say except that he came to announce the ongoing work of repair, that in God's kingdom there is strength and power to lean against the decay of creation, and that one day, decay, disorder, and death will be defeated in total. As the breath of God moved into the chaotic waters of the deep in that beginning act of creation, so also did Jesus move onto the chaotic stage of humanity to begin to live out the design of God, to bring order back to the nature of things, to proclaim freedom from that chaos. And in returning to Heaven, he left that breath of God again, that Holy Spirit, to live into the ongoing surge of chaos that we face. Always hovering, always watching, always ready to respond the Word God is speaking into our darkness.
I'm not saying anything like I really want to, but I can't capture the stirrings.
...I need a poet.
8:35:17 AM
