In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2)
How many times have we, as Christians, read this famous opening to Genesis, the first book of the Bible? Countless times! I have too but the other day I was reading it and I had an insight. I don’t know if I was reading it in a different way than originally intended but I kept thinking about the juxtaposed contradiction and conflict between darkness hovering over the deepness of potential mortal existence; compared to the Spirit of God also hovering over the same fathomless waters, and at the same uncertain time.
Why are both darkness and the Holy Spirit hovering in the same place? I know that it can mean a literal physical darkness and simply that God was there breaking it up into life, as the start to creation. But I wonder if there is a reason to read it another way, in the light of the fall of mankind, plague of sin, and the redemption offered by Jesus? Does it speak about the forthcoming battle between good and evil, at which God triumphed through Christ?
Perhaps – and I must admit that this is the way I have started to read it – there is a subtle hint at the good news message inherent in evangelistic proclamation. Don’t we often feel that our lives are smothered in darkness? That the yawning of the deep is frightening because of this void? And yet we are not alone. The Holy Spirit is silently at work, hovering over this same place of emptiness. He is ready to declare the illumination of God into what is formless and desolate. To say with authority, “Let there be light….”
It’s so easy to miss this perspective but I do believe that is an interesting way to read it, which aligns with the gospel. It reminds me of a poem I wrote called ‘Golgotha – the place of the skull’ in Cross-Cascade, my poetry collection which has been self-published on Amazon (and includes four poems published in ‘God & Nature Magazine’ by the American Scientific Affiliation).
The poem creates an imagined window into the moment of Jesus’ crucifixion, seemingly also a moment of deep darkness without any form of sanity. And yet that cross set aflame the entrance to hell and brought death to death:-
A deep hole in the ground. Gehenna wondering below.
Not realising heaven’s bait. As the cross fills the gap.
Touch of pure sacrifice. It starts burning hell’s gate.
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