Filled

“He did not create it to be empty,
but formed it to be inhabited.”
Is. 45:18 NIV

“One way or another,
we are compelled to fill the emptiness,
to do something with the space.”
~Shelley Cramm~
God’s Word For Gardeners
https://www.gardenindelight.com/books/niv-gods-word-gardeners-bible-grow-faith-growing-garden/

Scrolling into the clean pages of 2024, I have committed to a methodical study of reading through the Bible. In contrast to previous years when I’ve resolved to do so, I am not going it alone. This time, I look forward to meeting with a friend or two as we journey the pages of the Bible together, filling our time with talk of the Word.

Why? Because there are those seasons where one feels stuck, and a friend can help pull you out of the proverbial pit. Sometimes, the season we walk through is abstract, like the plateau of a blank canvas yawning before you like an uninspired stretch of parched grass. Like staring at a blank screen, waiting for inspiration to strike. The encouragement of a friend can help fill the emptiness you feel. Conversely, there is the season that descends upon you like an ominous cloud that appears out of nowhere, and you’re left feeling helpless and alone in the chaos of life’s circumstances, and a friend can help you process the challenges you’re facing.

I’ve been digging into the converse relationship that emptiness and chaos seem to have. It appears they come hand in hand from the very beginning, where we are immediately gripped by the genesis of our world: Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2). The Tree of Life version reads, “Now the earth was chaos and waste, darkness was on the surface of the deep, and the Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God; wind, breath, mind, spirit) was hovering upon the surface of the water” (italics mine).

Our friend John Goomey shared a message that was infused with how God created sustainable life while the cosmos was surrounded by the primeval chaos waters. God took what could destroy life—chaos—and breathed His Ruach breath into it, both filling the emptiness and bringing order from out of the chaos. Although the original chaos of creation was not inherently evil, sin stained it at the onset of human rebellion. “Through chaos God sought to restore cosmos” (Sidney Greidanus, https://www.crossway.org/articles/10-things-you-should-know-about-chaos-and-cosmos-in-gods-creation/).

Starting in the very Beginning, in Genesis 1, the Creator of life gathers the chaos; we see this Ruach wind take the stage throughout both Old and New Testaments, and as we seek Him, into our personal cosmos (def.—the universe seen as a well-ordered whole, a system of thought, Oxford Languages), both filling our emptiness and bringing order from our chaos.

I’ve had those days, the days that feel formless or conversely chaotic; or my heart feels empty, the darkness of my circumstance or a broken relationship looms long before the surface of my future. It’s tempting to stop and allow discouragement to shroud any hope that would attempt to grow on the barren wasteland. But note how God makes His next move at the end of that verse: the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Take hold of this promise: the Ruach Spirit of Life is weaving His breath throughout those circumstances and declaring His very breath over your chaos, over your barrenness, over the landscape that looms hopeless and empty.

Isaiah 43:18-20 encourages us to dwell on what is possible, to “not remember former things (forget it! Stop rehearsing the negatives!). Here I am, doing a new thing; Now it is springing up—do you not know about it? I will surely make a way in the desert, rivers in the wasteland…I give waters in the desert, rivers in the wilderness, to give drink to My chosen people,” Isaiah 43:18-20 TLV.

As Shelley Cramm so eloquently writes, “it is encouraging for us to remember this Scripture in the dark times when we don’t see the plans, when situations are barren, when nothing is growing or flowering or fruiting, when we feel hopeless” (My Father is the Gardener, Shelley Cramm, p. 10, https://www.gardenindelight.com/books/my-father-is-the-gardener/). He “surely makes a way” and hydrates our wasteland, and when the “Chaos calls to chaos” (Ps. 42:7 MSG) in our lives, we know that “the waves may roll, but they cannot prevail; they may roar, but they cannot cross” His spoken word in our lives (Jeremiah 5:22 NIV).

May 2024, looming clean before you yet, be filled with praising God, and may any chaotic situations you face be inhabited by the praises you sing! He did not create your life for it to be empty; no, indeed, He created it for you to inhabit it with praise!

“We are not adrift in the chaos.
We’re held in the everlasting arms.”
~Elisabeth Elliot~

“God inhabits the praises of this people.”
Psalm 22:3 KJV