Words Creating Space

Today is Election Day in the US and I want to offer Christians a challenge to view this day within the framework of God’s ongoing work of Creation. This perspective has brought life to me as I’ve navigated grief and I believe it can bring life to all of us as we play our part within the American political process. This perspective determines our posture and what we’ll reflect to the world.

The more I study Genesis, the more my estimation grows for the hand(s) that wrote it and for the work of the Holy Spirit that guided those hands. The first verses of Genesis juxtapose the images of the Spirit of God with chaos. I think this is a masterful juxtaposition because when I am in a chaotic situation, the first question I tend to ask is Where is God? 

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the deep and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.   Gen. 1:1-2

I experienced my own dark chaos when my 30-year-old son, Walker, passed away unexpectedly in June of 2023. My former life lost its form and order and I was plunged into a void that I didn’t know how to navigate. This unexpected loss threw my whole life off-kilter and I struggled to hold on to something that could keep me afloat. There was a huge chasm between God and my experience of His goodness. What helped bridge this chasm for me was the image of God’s Spirit hovering over it.

I began to see that Genesis presents the work of Creation as God’s ongoing process of self-revelation. God’s goodness is so prevalent in the account that it could be said that it assumes the role of a character within it. God threw Himself at us through the beauty of Creation and pronounced it good when nature reflected His transmuted glory. I look at nature and realize God’s deep desire to commune with me. 

However, since creation is a process, any certain point within this process may not be capable of reflecting the glory that God intends for it to have in its finished form. God’s Spirit hovering over the chaotic waters of unfinished creation became a snapshot of this process for me. This image reflected a point in time view that did not reflect the full finished product. This image contains God’s presence while not fully reflecting His good intentions.

It was comforting to me that my life at this point in time is also in an unfinished state but is still capable of housing and reflecting God’s good intentions for me. I am carrying these intentions within me and am expectantly waiting for them to be realized in God’s time. God’s Spirit within me is at work transforming my vision in the meantime. I am experiencing the “already, not yet” nature of His kingdom as I believe He will bring these intentions to full fruition. One day I will be united with Walker for eternity. This hope is reflected in how I wait.

In the same way, I feel that it is beneficial for us to view whatever unstable point in time we occupy here on earth as unfinished. This keeps us within the truth that God’s presence is still involved with us but that His reflection is not fully formed yet. 

So at this point in time in American politics, if things don’t happen to go our way, we can allow chaos to rule in our hearts by living anxious lives and not acknowledging nor valuing God’s presence, or we can agree that God is still present and we occupy a space that may feel incomplete. We trust that He will reveal Himself within His created order in His time but until then, He will be at work within us, supplying us with renewed vision to see and trust Him. In this outlook, God’s presence is the most valued commodity and what brings life, over a certain party’s ascension to power.

As we become people of renewed vision, we become people at peace. We have an opportunity to reflect this peace at this time in our country. May we be able to sense God’s hovering over us and offer the value of His presence and His stability to others.