Amidst the spinning turbulence of these days, I have found my heart being drawn back to the very beginning, when ‘God created the heavens and the earth.’ What must it have been like in the time before His Spirit came and ‘hovered over the waters?’ Joseph Haydn painted a dramatic, dissonant and dark sound portrait of ‘chaos’ in ‘Die Vorstellung des Chaos,’ the opening orchestral movement of his magnificent oratorio, The Creation.

But God was not absent from the ‘wild and waste’ void, for His Spirit was ‘hovering’ over the waters.’ The author of Genesis offers two different accounts of God’s work of creation. In Genesis 1 we see Him bringing order out of chaos over a period of seven days that culminates with the creation of humanity. The second account, in Genesis 2, is a complementary picture, in which God brings forth life in all its fullness from an uncultivated wilderness. I especially like the NKJV rendering of Genesis 2:4, which says, ‘This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.’ The Hebrew word, tôlēḏôṯ, means the ‘generations,’ the ‘family history’ of the heavens and earth, as God sets the stage for the whole human story.

The Hebrew uses six different words in these opening chapters of the Bible to describe the way God shaped and initiated the creation process: bara- (Gen.1:1, create, form, fashion, produce or create (Gen. 1:1 the key word of all); asah (1:7 make); natan (1:17 to set); yatsar (2:7 form); banah (2:2 make or build); and qanah (4:1,14:19 to create, possess or acquire).

And the Spirit of God hovering over the waters? (Geb. 1:2) Don’t think of this for one moment as being something static! This was God moving and sweeping through by His Spirit. There is nothing inert about the Spirit of God. He was moving, brooding and nurturing, like a bird on her eggs, actively warming, protecting, comforting and bringing purpose to the embryonic Earth. Glory!

And just as He was then, He is intimately involved in weaving together life and order and beauty, for He sees the end from the beginning. We cannot see the outcome now, but through the Scriptures and the power of godly imagination we are able to at least glimpse something of it.

Let’s ponder the work of Creation afresh with three tracks from Linda Entwistle’s magnificent rendering of Isaiah 40 that she first performed before a packed Harrogate Arena more than three decades ago. It is Dad’s voice that you will hear providing the dramatic readings.

Do you not know? Do you not hear?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nothing,
and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness.
To whom then will you compare me,
that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes on high and see:
who created these?
He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name;
by the greatness of his might
and because he is strong in power,
not one is missing.

From Isaiah 40 – but do read the whole chapter.

LISTEN HERE

Introduction The Wilderness
Interlude
Comfort, Comfort My People (Linda recorded this as a You Tube during the Covid lockdowns.)