4.01.2012

.:messy:::genesis1:1-2:.

i don't think anyone likes a mess. we may live around it as teenagers or in our twenties, but generally we prefer a lack of mess. we want things ordered because it helps us to see what's next, it helps us make sense of a world we often feel is a messed, it helps stay in control. we even claim God likes order, and i'm not going to disagree with that... but as i have been reflecting, maybe, just maybe God likes messy too.

in genesis 1:1-2 God creates.

"...the spirit of God was hovering over the waters" (v2)

in one of the translations, "hovering over the waters" is referred to as chaos. the hebrew word is tohu vavohu which means "the emptiness of darkness". it sounds pretty messy to me. so we could read it, the spirit of God was hovering over the mess. the thing is I don't know if God's priority is to order this mess... this chaos... this emptiness of darkness. if we go back to verse 1 we see Gods purpose, He creates.

i don't see God picking things up and putting them into place in this story in genesis 1, order happens, but it's a byproduct. i see God create out of the mess. i remember as a kid, I had this blue plastic box. i kept all my legos in it. i would dump all my pieces on the ground, out of this blue box and as it hit the rolled out carpet of our unfinished basement townhouse, each piece landed at will with no purpose to where it would go a mess. as I hovered over it i took each piece and put them together, without order in mind but rather to create. from the mess to imagination to creation.

messy. ever do we get frustrated with mess. our world is messy. our jobs are messy. our relationships are messy. our lives are messy. other peoples lives are messy. our church is messy. our past is messy. our present is messy. our future might look messy.

God uses messy.

look at those stories of the people who would be those who we look to in the bible. abraham, jacob, joseph, moses, all of israel, david's choices, ruth, hosea and gomer, jeremiah, job, jonah, 12 disciples, a young betrothed virgin girl named mary, an unsuspecting carpenter named joseph, a persecutor of christians named paul ...all messy.

God creates out of messy, for his purpose.

when we encounter messes...in our lives, in the people we meet, in the church, in our work or schools... rather than try to fix them, maybe we should start asking God... "Lord, may Your spirit hover over the mess (tohu vavohu) i see before my eyes, and may you speak into it, and create out of it, for your purpose."

a.j. swoboda writes... "christianity offers us brilliant insight into messes. that maybe death is no more than the sunset of hopelessness, and resurrection the sunrise of hope. we call this God's kingdom."

.:aaron.chuah::march.30.2012:.

posted by SilQ @ 11:45 PM 0 Comments