Human beings love order. When our world descends into chaos, we quickly begin the task of restoring a semblance of order. When the larger world around us becomes chaotic, we are fearful of being sucked into the wider maelstrom.
God chose to reverse the chaos of the amorphous universe. After hovering over the waters of turmoil, God began the process of creating form and beauty out of disorder.
Just contemplate what you do in the waking hours of a single day and consider all the ways you attempt to maintain order in your life. How do you react when your personal world order hits the turbulence of life and is threatened by upheaval?
We spend a great deal of physical energy bringing form out of our chaos and maintaining an ordered life. And when our world does spin out of control, too many times our natural response is to complain, curse, and blame.
In the book of beginnings, Genesis 1:2 reveals a simple three-step process to bringing order out of chaos. It began with the chaos. How and when the chaos in the universe came to be is a debate others can argue. But chaos existed in the dark, wet, void of the cosmos. Perhaps this image was in the subconscious minds of the creators of the lava lamp.
Then God hovered. The original Hebrew meaning for hover is “to brood; to be relaxed.” When we are relaxed enough to brood, i.e., ponder and mediate on a situation, the time spent in doing so allows our imaginations to consider new forms to replace the chaos.
After such a brooding time, one goes into action to create beauty, to restore the benefits of peaceful existence in one’s heart and to the community at large. God’s response when the creation process was complete was to say, “It is good.” What a wonderful appraisal to be able to say when one is finished creating something beautiful, that “It is good.”
From the beginning it was so. Chaos, hover, and create.
