I have heard the creation story so many times I have lost the sheer wonder of everything springing from nothing at the WORD of God. So, I am going all the way back to the dark, watery sphere of earth before....anything we know. From The Message Bible: First this: God created the Heavens and the Earth-all you see, all you don't see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness. God's Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.
Nothingness...darkness, water, emptiness, inky blackness. I cannot even begin to picture this, because every image I conjure presupposes something. My concept of nothing is a lack of something, but there is not anything here. I understand water in relation to its wetness, but there is no one to feel it. I know what water looks like based on how light reflects and refracts from it, but there is no light, so the water mirrors the dark around it. Even saying "inky blackness" implies an intellect that knows what ink is, and all the language that flows from it. To say black, you must understand that true black is an absence of color and light. So, I have no concept of this, no matter how hard I try to wrap my mind around it.
But wait...there is something. God. God The Spirit knows that this nothingness, beneath its watery shell, has the potential for life. Any bird knows an egg from a rock, even if the uninitiated would see them as the same in shape, color, and potential for life. The Holy Spirit did what any wise "bird" would do when confronted with a seemingly lifeless spheroid, He brooded it. I do not know how long. No time length is given between verse 2 and verse 3. For an unknown time there was only the embryonic earth in its watery shell, suspended in the pitch black nothingness of space with the Holy Spirit patiently brooding it, waiting for signs of life. How can I help but be amazed at all this incomprehensible nothingness and the bold audacity of God to believe in the possibility of life. Perhaps the earth was more stone than egg and it would have been pure foolishness for any Being but God to hope for life from it.
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