God’s love; His Generous journey of Creation

“First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.” Genesis 1:1 The Message

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will some over you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” Luke 1:34-35 NIV

God’s Spirit moves freely in creation but He pauses, hovers or ‘broods’ as The Message puts it over an abyss. He stops and puts all of Himself into the abyss. And then? Life. The Lord God creates a beautiful, joyous wonder filled world.

In the beginning everything was good, so very good. All was filled with glory, His glory, His love. He walked with Adam and Eve in the paradise He Created. He had a personal, relationship with them. They spoke together as dearly loved companions. Perfection. And then brokenness enters creation. Adam and Eve are enticed by sin and evil.

Expelled from paradise, pollution and impurity soil His creation. All feels dirty.

How hurtful this must have been; how painful to see that which you created in love destroying itself and all around it. So, how do you fix such utter and complete brokenness? It must be a hurt akin to a child’s betrayal of a parent. Or imagine a child forsaken by a parent? That is how you fix it: you send your son into this dark world to love it. You send your best; your most loved. You send your son, Jesus, into the world. This is Generosity: He journeys, He hovers, so all the dross, the muck, and all the darkness and hurts will be acknowledged, felt and healed.

And He will recreate the world with love, His and His son.

This same spirit who “brooded like a bird above the watery abyss”, this same spirit that formed the world at creation; hovered over Mary one day in Nazareth and Jesus entered into the world. By Jesus’ coming, the Spirit can generously journey into our hearts and our minds and rebirth, new life comes. So we pray:

Come Kingdom, come. Inside our hearts, our communities, our world. Your creation, your kingdom, come to my heart.

Challenge: God spoke and the world, all creation came to be. But Zephaniah tells us that God sings over us

“He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17

God journeys toward us because He so loves, us, His world. He sings rejoicing over us as a parent over a child. No more rebukes; we are His delight. Sing to Him.