Hover

By Pastor Paul Gauche

Today’s Word: ‘HOVER’ as in… the Spirit is hovering over all things.

I was on a run early this morning. It was that beautiful time of the morning: brisk, clear, bright, and quiet – except for the birds. All of them together announcing the beginning of another new day as they hovered over me. In the first two verses of the book of Genesis in what can only be described as sheer poetry, the writer make a lovely attempt at describing the scene: a formless void, deep darkness. Eugene Peterson translates it this way: “Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness.” And yet the Spirit is present, hovering over absolutely everything. The Spirit is present, hovering over the formless void, over the deep darkness, over the soup of nothingness, the bottomless emptiness, the inky blackness. The Spirit is present, pointing absolutely everything forward, toward new life; calling life and light out of the empty darkness, bringing ‘knowing’ out of the unknown, creating shape out of the shapeless.

We’re in a bit of darkness these days. As the entire global community rallies together, ironically by appropriately distancing from one another, the void – the space between us holds both light and darkness, the known and unknown, even life and death. There is a void between what we know and what we don’t know. But in the midst of it all, we continue to remind one another that the Spirit is present.

The Spirit is hovering over everything. And as the Spirit hovers we can re-frame how we look at this present darkness.

Instead of asking “How will I make my way through this dark time?” we might ask, “How can I shine light into the lives of people who live in deep darkness?”

Instead of asking “How will I make it through this day?” we might ask, “How can I help those around me explore and discover new ways of living into the hopeful days ahead?”

We can shift our point of view from looking down to looking up, above, where the Spirit is hovering, over absolutely everything.

#100days50words

Paul Gauche is the Pastor of Life Transitions at Prince of Peace. His posts are part of his #100days50works project, where be blogs about a different word each day. You can follow his project on Instagram (@pgauche), or on his blog, Thriving Rhythms.