ELM - He Hovers...

“In the beginning God created…Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering…” Gen 1:1.

Last night my granddaughter spent the night with us after she found out her daddy had died. When she first walked in she had a brave forced smile on her face as she held up a picture of her daddy. She had a tight grip on what will become representation of the day ‘the world got dark.’ I listened to her throughout the evening with heartbreak and deep sadness. ‘Emmy, I have asked God to send my daddy back with a new heart…Do you think He will? Emmy, I want you and Grandpa to come and live with us so you won’t die.’ Just a few of the thoughts of the brokenhearted…and darkness was over the surface of the deep.

…and the Spirit of God was hovering. God was so amazing yesterday thanks to so many prayers. My sister sent me a link to a book she is reading called Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor. I read the author's interview and loved her take on darkness. She said that ‘darkness is everything I do not know, cannot control, and am often afraid of. But that’s just the beginner’s definition. If I am a believer in God, then darkness is also where God dwells.’ I believe that is why we learn of God’s nature more in the dark, and sense His leading when the light is gone. Over the past couple days I look and see the formless and empty eyes of my grandchildren…children walking out the darkness…their new beginning. The comforting aspect in all of this is that the same God who created something from nothing in the beginning is already creating something here. He is hovering…He is dwelling…He is going to make beauty from darkness. It is what He does and it is who God is. He breathed life into the universe and He will breathe life into the hearts of our babies. As Taylor stated in her interview, darkness should not be 99% negative connotation since powerful things happen in the darkness. What happens when we walk in the darkness as Christians? Amazing fellowship with God the Father happens, sharing in the suffering of Christ the Son is experienced , and allowing the groans of the Holy Spirit to cry out on our behalf is demonstrated.

‘In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans’ Romans 8:26.

In the darkness, we don’t have to do the work, but the work of faith will do the work through the Trinity.