EX-NIHILO – SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters” (Genesis 1: 1, 2).
The first words of the Bible state that God is the Creator God. No argument, no explanation, just a statement – God created. Out of nothing he makes something! He made the heavens and the earth out of nothing. That is a great idea to get your mind around, that God can take non-existent material and make something. The Psalmist writes, “The heavens declare the glory of the God; the skies proclaim the works of hands” (Psalm 19: 1). God is all-powerful! And in his powerfulness he gives shape to that which he creates, he takes the bare and empty substance and fashions it anew, he takes away the darkness and replaces it with light. The Creator God tells us how he goes about his work – the work of creation. He sees the potential of the raw material and makes something quite glorious from it.
These opening words of the book of beginnings reveal the very character and purpose of God; first He forms and then He fills. He formed the earth and filled it with plants and animals. He formed the heavens and filled it with stars and planets. He formed the seas and filled them with living creatures. God forms and then fills! Even when it came to the time to create man, God proceeded in the same manner, “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and [then] breathed [filled]…his nostrils with the breathe of life” (Genesis 2: 7). God forms and he fills!
There is no second-guessing what God is about continually! There is no mystery about God’s intention concerning his creation. He takes the formless and empty and makes something quiet distinctive and beautiful. God has declared his hand from the very beginning of time, a message that we need to hear. God forms and fills!
There is no second-guessing what God intends for you. He wants to take your life as he did mine and make it a new. He wants to form and fill our lives.
Indeed, we could take the descriptive words of the opening of Genesis and apply them as a description of human lives today, formless, empty and in darkness. It is a true description of man without God’s creativity. No shape or meaning to life, unfulfilled and going nowhere, despair and sadness permeating our very being.
Paul writing to the Church at Corinth says to them, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old is gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5: 17). God forms and then he fills.
The chorus says,
Something beautiful, something good,
All my confusion Christ understood.
All I had to offer him was brokenness and strife,
But he made something beautiful of my life.
Formlessness - that is what God sees, yet in his creativity he can see what we can become. He can fashion lives anew. Unlike the nursery story of Humpty Dumpty who could not be put together again and left in pieces, we can be formed and filled anew. God can take the broken up pieces, the broken-up dreams and the broken-up lives and re-create them in to something – something out of nothing.
Something out of nothing, something out of nothing - that is what God dares us to believe. Do you believe it for yourself? To be something, to be somebody, then we need the creative touch of God upon our lives, we need his infilling of his grace and mercy too.
God formed the earth and then filled it with plants and animals. God formed the heavens and then filled it with stars and planets. God can re-form our lives and fill it with good things. That is God’s intention for us right from the very foundation of the world. There is no hidden agenda with God, there is only one thing that he has upon his mind, for you to become his creation.
