Scripture Daily

Context No. 1512 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 1:1-5: in context

1In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was formless and empty. Darkness was on the surface of the deep and God’s Spirit was hovering over the surface of the waters. 3God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4God saw the light, and saw that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness. 5God called the light “day”, and the darkness he called “night”. There was evening and there was morning, the first day.

The Bible opens with the beginning of everything. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, darkness over the deep, and the Spirit of God hovering over the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and separated the light from the darkness, calling the light day and the darkness night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

The first act of creation is the speaking of light into darkness: God said, let there be light, and there was light. Before it, there was only formlessness and emptiness and darkness over the deep; and into that God spoke, and light came, and order began, and God called it good. The whole of creation begins here, with a word that brings light into the dark and form into the void. It is worth dwelling on the pattern, because it is one God repeats. The God who spoke light into the primal darkness is the same God who can speak light into the dark and formless places of a life and a world. Where there is chaos, emptiness, darkness, God's characteristic work is to speak light and order and goodness into it. The New Testament makes the connection explicit: the God who said, let light shine out of darkness, is the one who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of his glory in the face of Christ. The same creative word that first brought light is at work still, bringing light into dark hearts, order into formless lives, goodness where there was void. When we face our own darkness and chaos, the formless and empty places, this is the God we are dealing with: the one whose first and characteristic act is to say, let there be light. He has not lost the capacity to speak light into the dark.

When I face the dark and formless places in my life or the world, can I remember that I am dealing with the God whose first act was to speak light into darkness, and whose characteristic work is still to bring light and order and goodness where there was void?

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