On January 2^nd, the earth experienced something that only happens once a year: Perihelion. 

Now if you’re like me, that’s not a word we’re familiar with.  In fact, up until this year, I’d never heard of it.  Perihelion is the term describing the day when the earth is closest to the sun during its year-long elliptical orbit.  Apparently, the naked eye can’t discern this increased proximity, but it’s there and this year, it happened on January 2^nd.

What I find so interesting about all this is that on this year’s perihelion, the city of Tallahassee never saw the sun. 

It rained and rained and rained all day long.  From morning to evening, we saw nothing but gloomy clouds and incessant storms.  By day’s end, the small drainage stream in my back yard looked like a raging river.  For a few hours, we had waterfront property! 

Here we were, closer to the sun than any other point for the rest of the year, and in our little pocket of the world, we couldn’t even see the sun. 

If we measured reality exclusively by our own, limited experience, there is no way any of us could have concluded we were closer to the sun than on any other day of the year.  And yet, while our experience expressed one thing, what was true moved on indifferent of our inability to experience what was truly reality. 

No wonder God’s people are called to live by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7)!

I share this as a word of encouragement and hope. 

Over the last week, many of us have felt as though the clouds of hopelessness and despair have blocked out the sun.  The recent events of our nation, coupled with the ongoing, languishing reality of Covid-19, political division, pandemic concerns, racial brokenness, and economic challenges, have made so many of us wonder: where is God in all this? 

As I’ve reflected on that question, I noticed something in Genesis 1 recently that I’d never considered before.  Genesis 1 begins with these words:

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 was hovering over the waters. ~ Genesis 1:1-2 (NIV)

Out of the gate, the raw materials of creation don’t look all that promising. 

Formlessness

Emptiness

Darkness

That’s our starting point – disorder, chaos, darkness, emptiness, formlessness.  Not exactly the starting lineup you’d hope for.

And yet, while all that is true, that is not all that is true.  While all that is there, that is not all that there is. Look where God is in the midst of all of that…

“The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters” ~ Genesis 1:2b (NIV)

The darkness

Emptiness

Formlessness

Chaos

Disorder

All this nothingness is there and so is God – in the midst of it all, hovering over the waters like a mother bird brooding over her chicks.  “Where is God,” we wonder? “Where is He,” we ask?  He is there, drawn near into the mess itself.  He is in the midst of all that is, as it is, even when things are not as they should be.

Much like that rainy, sunless day of perihelion, creation reminds us that we must not allow the presence of darkness, disorder, and chaos in the world to cause us to think that their presence implies God’s absence.  God is not apart from these things – He’s close, drawn near, hovering. 

God draws near not as the cause of the chaos, but its completion.  His nearness is not an endorsement of the chaos, but a sign of its end.  God draws near us as we are, and to life as it is, so that through Him we might become far more.