1 Epiphany, January 7
Gen. 1:1-5 • Ps. 29
Acts 19:1-7 • Mark 1:4-11
As the Spirit of God moves over the face of the waters, the voice of the Lord calls into being the first spark of created light. Before this moment, we find creation and, in a sense, our lives as they would be without the Spirit and without light. “The earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep” (Gen. 1:2). This is a common human disease, a contagion passed from generation to generation, and particularly intense in these times. People feel that their lives are without purpose, empty, shrouded by a pall of anxiety and depression, and moving inexorably toward the extinction of death. In this condition, a “death instinct” incubates, a growing hope for the sleep of death. Tragically it is often attended by a total disregard for the dignity of other human persons. In this view, no such dignity exists because there is nothing to ground it.
Listen again to an incredible moment in the first lines of the first book of the Bible: “The Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gen. 1:2-3). Here light is illumination, the pouring forth of purpose and direction in the created order. We notice something of this in the prologue of John’s gospel. “What has come into being in him was life, and life was the light of all people” (John 1:3-4). Creation is not mere chaos, a vast emptiness of random and disconnected parts. Rather, the one God calls all things into being and declares the creation good because goodness itself is the source, guide, and goal of all things. This basic conviction is the light by which we see light. Trusting that all things come of thee, O Lord, we behold the boundless web of being as suffused with life and light, purpose and meaning, moving toward an eternal and ineffable good.
Looking out upon the world as a microcosm of daily life and the expansive mystery of all things, we see and sense the “music of the spheres,” the harmonies wrought by an overlapping, interconnected, and complementary chain of reverberant beings.
We see and sense this, and yet from time to time, we are overcome by its apparent opposite — a disturbing dissonance, a clanging cymbal of despairing noise — the work of an enemy: sin, the flesh, and the devil; war, poverty, famine, pestilence, and disaster.
Have we deceived ourselves in the conviction that creation is the work of an all-good and all-loving God? Many have said “Yes” to this question and have tried with Stoic resolve to accept the world as under the reign of capricious gods or erratic fates. Indeed, this sentiment is not altogether unknown in the Bible, as in this well-known passage from Job 2:10: “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”
We know there is beauty in the world; we know there is brutality in the world, and so we ask: Are they locked in an eternal battle? There is a battle indeed, and it has already been won, though we yet await its completion. There is a light that illumines the created universe. That same light, in the fullness of time, came into the world and was not overcome by darkness. We have been baptized into his name, given the Holy Spirit, and declared the children of God by adoption and grace (Acts 19:1-9; Mark 1:4-11). In Christ, we are the lamp upon the lampstand that gives light to the whole house. Thus, we shine and hope and endure until we “attain to the festival of everlasting light” (the Great Vigil of Easter).
Look It Up: Psalm 29:3
Think About It: The Spirit of God moves over you, envelops you, and breaks your heart.