Light · Truth · Questions
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
The power goes out late at night. You feel along the wall for the hallway and bump the corner of a table you walk past every day. Then the power comes back. Every light in the house snaps on at once, and the room you thought you knew is plain to see, down to the shoes on the floor. Some of the questions you carry live in a hallway like that. What would you see first if the lights came on?
Genesis opens before anything has shape. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The 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.” (Genesis 1:1-2 WEB). “Formless and empty” is tohu vavohu in Hebrew, two rhyming words for a world with no shape and nothing in it.
Light comes on the first day, three days before God reveals the great lights in the sky (Genesis 1:16). “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw the light, and saw that it was good. God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day’, and the darkness he called ‘night’. There was evening and there was morning, the first day.” (Genesis 1:3-5 WEB). The verb for “divided” is badal, to separate, and it returns two verses later when God divides the waters (Genesis 1:6).
Spiritual Move: Gratitude. Sit where daylight reaches you. Name five things the light lets you see right now, and after each one, say, “It is good.”