"It was a dark and stormy night..."

Gen 1:2 - The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep water. The Spirit of God was hovering over the water.

The second verse of the Bible is one shrouded in mystery. An earth exists, but it is an earth with which we are completely unfamiliar, and one that we could barely imagine. What we are told here paints a pretty bleak picture of darkness. I can tell you also that the water (which seems to be the only real matter of the earth at this point), can be described by the wording of the original language as a "surging mass of water." It was not a scene of calmness!

It was also an earth completely without life or light. The Spirit of God is described as "hovering" here, but other versions state that the Spirit was "moving" or "moving gently" over these stormy waters. The contrast is clear between a violent, dark, lifeless world and a serene and gently moving God.

If you have ever been in a violent storm, on land or especially at sea, you may recognize that it is very difficult to remain calm. One of the reasons this is true is because of the unpredictability of the power being unleashed. If you are on a boat that seems about to capsize because of a storm, you can't predict whether or not it will stay afloat, or if sinks whether you will survive, or if you do survive at first whether there will be any rescue, and so on.

It is the same when we are facing storms that come in life as well. A financial disaster; a loved one ill or hurt; the loss of a dream; or any number of dark and seemingly hopeless "storms" can come on any of us. It is also very hard to remain calm in those circumstances for mainly the same reasons of unpredictability. During life's storms, we rarely know how we will survive and what the future will bring if we do.

If, however, we know that God is not worried at all, and that, as in this verse, He is hovering around you and "moving gently" through your circumstances, we can face a dark and stormy time with assurance that the light is just ahead. Our God is the Creator King of the universe, and He is definitely in control during the darkest, bleakest, and stormiest parts of existence; the earth's and our own.

Your joyfully loquacious believer,
LEE