English Standard Version
The Living Bible describes the earth as a shapeless, chaotic mass (which is kind of how I feel some days). Eugene Peterson's The Message calls is 'a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness.' In summary, God didn't have a lot to work with.
One of the foundation beliefs that we have as Christians is that God created out of nothing (ex nihilo is the $2 phrase). This matters because it means that before creation, there was nothing but God. What God created is utterly separate from God, so creation itself isn't God. It also gives us a picture of what hell is -- if hell is ultimate separation from God, then a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, a shapeless & chaotic mass is probably what hell is like.
But God was there. And there was potential in the nothingness because God was there, and in God, there is possibility. Over the bleakest existence, God is hovering, ready to act, ready to create.
And so we come to today, with a virus racing around our conflicted world, and we know that God is here, hovering over whatever bleakness exists in our life, walking with us in the darkness, no matter how soupy it may feel. God speaks life into the inky blackness, and the light overcomes the bottomless emptiness. We may stare into the face of tomorrow and wonder if there is any hope, but God is always creating anew, giving birth to hope and light in the face of darkness and despair.
Do not lose hope, friends!!!! The same God who was there in the beginning is active now, and that same God will be active after the end, and it is God's intent to bring you along into eternity. No matter how firmly closed the door to tomorrow may feel, no matter how shapeless and chaotic today may seem, God is at work creating something wonderful, something beautiful, and calling us to endure to the end, that we may celebrate with God, even though we must first pass through the inky blackness of death to reach the life everlasting.
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