Ex Nihilo
All of the real things are born out of darkness.
The whole earth began as darkness hovering on the face of the deep. From it the light was formed, and the rocks and the trees, and then the more lively loud things like elephants, and human beings. Our common origin was deep darkness, something we instinctually fear but remember. Babies enter the world through darkness. Rain falls through dark clouds. We wake up every morning from darkness, a new awakening. A new birth. A tiny creation story.
All of the true things are spoken out of silence.
First there was silence, "then God said," and it was so. We know God speaks this way, sending voices to cry out in the wilderness. God is one who speaks from the stillness, and we know it when we get still enough to hear, to give up our own unceasing loudness.
I know this: real things are born into my life through darkness. Nothing valuable has ever come to me without pain. And true things are spoken to me in the silence of selflessness, in the seconds before I pray, in the quiet cessation of chatter inside my head when I run. Something is coming into being.
Woe to him who says to a father, "What are you begetting?" or to a woman, "With what are you in labor?" Thus says the LORD, "Ask me of things to come...I made the earth and created humankind on it. It was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host (Isaiah 45)."
God knows what God is birthing. Something is coming into being. The whole earth is in the darkness of expectant waiting. We take our place in the cosmic second before the prayer. We take our place in the painful, and in the peaceful, and in the silent.
In the LORD all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory (Is 45).
The whole earth began as darkness hovering on the face of the deep. From it the light was formed, and the rocks and the trees, and then the more lively loud things like elephants, and human beings. Our common origin was deep darkness, something we instinctually fear but remember. Babies enter the world through darkness. Rain falls through dark clouds. We wake up every morning from darkness, a new awakening. A new birth. A tiny creation story.
All of the true things are spoken out of silence.
First there was silence, "then God said," and it was so. We know God speaks this way, sending voices to cry out in the wilderness. God is one who speaks from the stillness, and we know it when we get still enough to hear, to give up our own unceasing loudness.
I know this: real things are born into my life through darkness. Nothing valuable has ever come to me without pain. And true things are spoken to me in the silence of selflessness, in the seconds before I pray, in the quiet cessation of chatter inside my head when I run. Something is coming into being.
Woe to him who says to a father, "What are you begetting?" or to a woman, "With what are you in labor?" Thus says the LORD, "Ask me of things to come...I made the earth and created humankind on it. It was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host (Isaiah 45)."
God knows what God is birthing. Something is coming into being. The whole earth is in the darkness of expectant waiting. We take our place in the cosmic second before the prayer. We take our place in the painful, and in the peaceful, and in the silent.
In the LORD all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory (Is 45).
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