Imagine standing at the edge of something terrifying—the rim of a canyon, the threshold of a
decision that could unmake your life, the silence after devastating news. Now imagine someone walking up to
stand beside you, not to fix or explain, but simply to be present.
Genesis 1:1-2 "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."
The Hebrew word tohu vavohu—formless and void—sounds like what it describes: chaos, emptiness, a kind of
cosmic mess. This is how the story begins. Not with order, not with beauty, but with darkness and deep waters.
And God hovers.
The word for "hovering" appears elsewhere in Scripture to describe a mother bird brooding over her nest,
protective and close. Before a single word is spoken, before light pierces the darkness, there is presence. God
doesn't stand at a distance from the chaos, directing operations from some celestial control room. He gets close.
He broods over the deep.
We often imagine that God recoils from our mess—that our doubt, our emptiness, our spiritual chaos creates
distance between us and the Divine. But Genesis opens with a different testimony: God is drawn to the formless
places. The wild and waste are exactly where the Spirit chooses to hover.
Perhaps today you feel more tohu vavohu than anything else. Perhaps the waters feel too deep, the darkness too
thick. You don't need to clean yourself up before approaching God. The Spirit is already there, hovering,
brooding, ready.
Where do you sense chaos or formlessness in your life right now?
What would it mean to believe that God is drawn to your emptiness rather than repelled by it?
Prayer Prompt: Sit with the image of the Spirit hovering over dark waters. Let yourself be held in that
brooding presence without needing to fill the silence with words or solutions. Simply let God be close to your
chaos.
The ancient Near Eastern creation myths that Israel's neighbors told were stories of divine
violence—gods at war, creation emerging from bloodshed and conflict. Genesis is deliberately, shockingly
different. There is no battle. There is presence, and then there is word, and then there is light. Israel's God
doesn't fight chaos; he hovers over it with the patience of a mother.
Deuteronomy 32:11; Psalm 139:7-12; Matthew 11:28-30