Ruah

Our darkness. Our chaos. Our ongoing struggles. That last addiction that won’t go away. The fears that linger despite numerous Bible verses memorized. The pride that won’t be rooted out of our heart. The deep shame that Jesus’ blood hasn’t seemed to cleanse yet, as much as we intellectually know it has.

But step back. Before time. Before was. Before is. Where your feet stand on nothing because there is nothing. And peer in.

“The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit [rûaḥ] was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2).

Chaos. But Spirit--to creation.

Step back to a paradise now quaking, with dark clouds rolling in over the sun-sprinkled glory, the verdant leaves now beginning to curl in fear:

“And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the [rûaḥ] of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden” (Gen. 3:8).

Fruit. Sin.

Shatter.

Uncreation, unblessing, separation, chaos, the serpent rules over the man, undoing.

But.

But the wind, the rûaḥ, perhaps even a reference to the Spirit (although the word here is often translated “cool”) was present. Just as the Spirit hovered over chaos of the unformed world, so God still was hovering over sinful human beings. Whether just a verbal, literary allusion to the Spirit or his actual presence, God in his Spirit said, “I will do something new. Hope.” Judgment fell, but also the pronounced promise: A seed will come. The ruah chose to hover over the chaos of judgment and sin to once again bring life. 

Chaos of wickedness and flood. Judgment. But wind/Spirit--to hope again.

Step back to the dark clouds of day in and day out rain, the despondent damp that permeates every thing, the horizon of unbreakable water:

“But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a [rûaḥ] blow over the earth, and the waters subsided” (Gen. 8:1).

Chaos. Judgment. Spirit once again hovers--to create again.

After judgment, God creates again. New earth, new division of waters. New forming. New man (Noah) in a garden (vineyard—and once again, new fall, fruit of the vine instead of fruit of the tree, but that’s another story). New covenant.

Step back to the fear cries of a slave nation, on the verge of anticipation with hopes being crushed with the hoofbeats and drum of chariot wheels:

“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD drove back the sea by a strong east [rûaḥ] all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided” (Exo. 14:21).

"Parting of the Red Sea" by Trisha Keiman

The dividing of the waters formed a new nation. They went in a group of slaves and came out Israel—the people delivered by the Lord. His. Not Pharaoh’s. His.

Chaos and slavery. Judgment. Spirit--creation of a nation to be hope for the nations.

Step back to a scene on the Jordan River, the splashing of baptism, a welling of hope with the rush of the river:

“And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him” (Mat. 3:16).

Baptism, God recognizes his new creation, the True Human truly bearing the Image of God (Heb. 1:3). The one in whom a new race, a new creation of beings, a new humanity would come (see Eph. 2; Col. 3).

And here, judgment’s shadow fell too—the Lamb of God who would take the sins of the world.

Chaos of a broken world and oppression and sin. Spirit--creation. 

Our struggles? Us?

Our chaos. Our judgment on Christ. The Spirit in us. New creation.

Do not miss the power and the hope of this pattern. Ever since creation, our God has been working to form and fill, to create. His is an ongoing creative power that cannot be stymied. This is his character! And the same Spirit that drove back the waves of oceans and caused land to erupt forth, the same Spirit that met Adam and Eve in mercy, the same Spirit that drove back pounds of water in flood judgment, the same Spirit that parted a sea is at work in you. Picture the power, the force, the awe of the Israelites. That is his power in you. That is his power against your besetting sin and the hanging on addiction.

Picture the creative power of filling land with trees and flowers, of the Spirit’s creative work blossoming forth in viola violets, in pomegranate reds, the gaudy eyes of the peacock, the daring yellows of sunflowers, the arching greens of sequoia trees. The same Spirit is at work in you, fashioning you to be a new creation in the image of the True Adam, in the image of Christ (Col. 3:10). His unique creativity and color in a unique you, just as manifold and various as his creation.

New creation. You. Hope in the Spirit.The Spirit still creates, still works. We always have hope for the impossible. He can create out of nothing, create out of judgment, create out of sin, create out of chaos.