I am a fan of science fiction and fantasy. I watch Syfy, qualify as at least a light-weight Trekkie, and have seen all of the Stars Wars movies multiple times… “I’m not the chaplain you were looking for.” (If you don’t get it, don’t worry. It’s not that important.) The point is…I love both watching and reading about the adventures of Gandolf and his hobbits, the daring do of Marvel comic superheroes, and the education of Harry Potter and his friends. I like Harry Dresden, and Sookie Stackhouse, Merlin the Magician and The Vampire Lestat. I’ve gone voyaging with the Dawn Treader, and know, deep down, that “winter is coming.”
You may find all of this more than a little weird, but I wear weirdness as a badge of honor. There is something in these plots and characters that breathes life into my imagination. They speak to my hopes and fears for humanity, and invite me to see beyond what is visible. They call me to embrace and enjoy and take action towards the future. They help me to remember that we all were created for supernatural living.
Though we may often forget it, and be uncertain or even ashamed of it, the Spirit of the living God empowers and encourages us towards supernatural living. That is part and parcel of our faith; we have been welcomed by the Holy Spirit into the supernatural way and truth and life. In the Spirit, we become more than we are; we become more than meat and chemicals: more than, as one of my favorite authors describes us, “little bags of thinking water held up briefly by fragile accumulations of calcium” (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids).
We have, by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit, the ability to live beyond the death-marked rhythm of stimulus and response--stimulus and response. We have the supernatural ability to reflect and meditate (In Psalm 46:10 God challenges us to “be still” and know Him.”). We have the supernatural ability to contemplate our actions and existence, and to even “sync-up” our thoughts with those of the All Mighty (“Let this mind be in you which also was in Christ Jesus…” Philippians 2:5).
One of the most surprising things about this supernatural power is the fact that it is most obviously on display in the mundane events of our lives… In how we conduct our business affairs and bear the burdens of our mortal bodies… In how we relate to others and rule our passions we reveal both the absence and the glory of the God who spoke us into being. It is not so much what we do that matters, but the Spirit in and with which we do what we do that illustrates how much more we matter than mere matter.
And it is this Spirit that we first meet in Scripture hovering over the waters of a dark, chaotic, and empty world. How long did the Spirit hover there? Peering into the darkness, unmoved by the chaos, and waiting in the void for the voice of the Father.
It was not unlike the situation we find ourselves in here today… The eminent astrophysicist and outspoken materialist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson has argued that, far from indicating the activity of a homo-sapien-loving Designer, the universe is an inefficient and dangerous place to live.
In a popular lecture making its way around the internet he argues:
Most places in the universe will kill life instantly--instantly! People say “Oh, the forces of nature are just right for life.” Excuse me. Just look at the volume of the universe where you can’t live. You will die instantly. That is not what I call the Garden of Eden, alright… We’re on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy--gone is this beautiful spiral that we have. And of course we’re on a one-way, expanding universe as we wind down to oblivion, as the temperature of the universe approaches absolute zero. … The inner solar system is a shooting gallery. And look how long it took for multicultural life to evolve--3.5 billion years! Obviously not a good design. Then there are the earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and one of Darwin’s favorites, lightning strikes. 99% of all life that ever lived is now extinct. None of this is any sign that there is a benevolent anything out there.
And all of this is besides the random acts of evil that haunt us on the evening news and serve as fodder for the agendas of our political idi…ots, I mean, ideologues. We are surrounded by a wasteland of broken families and relationships. Nations and classes and races rage against their injustices (both real and imagined), and wars burn around the globe, being smothered out in one place only to flare up in another. We are a people plagued by social ills: poverty, drug abuse, and violent crimes are with us always. Man’s inhumanity to man (to say nothing of the females of our species) is widely documented and bemoaned.
And the cry goes out to do something, anything, even if it’s wrong. On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked and used 4 airplanes to target several of the United States most prized assets, and they killed almost 3,000 people on American soil. And something had to be done. Something just had to be done; it could not stand. We, as a nation, had to act, and act we did: a decade’s worth of war in a country only tangentially related to the events of 9/11 has netted us 150 dead reporters, almost 5,000 dead American troops with an additional 32,000 wounded, over 10,000 dead Iraqi troops and police and an additional 55,000 dead insurgents, and, not to be forgotten, an estimated half a million and more men, women, and children. That’s roughly 190 additional souls snuffed out for every one taken on 9-11-01; and that’s not counting the more than 13,000 who have died in Afghanistan.
In mid-December of this past year, a mentally disturbed young man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT and killed 27 people including himself and 20 children. And the cry went out again that something had to be done. 27 people die at the hand of a mentally disturbed young man and a nation of 315 million people begin to seriously discuss what “must be done.” …because something, anything, must be done, even if it’s wrong.
It is natural to take action. If you hit me, then I’ll hit you. If you take one of mine, then I’ll take two of yours. This is exactly why the Bible set the limit at “an eye for an eye” instead of allowing the victims to get “justice” by taking their abuser’s head off. And it is also why the Apostle Paul, faced with a world becoming increasing “blind and toothless” was determined to teach us “a better way.” (1 Cor. 12:31)
And the earth was formless and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2)
For how long? How long did He do nothing? How long did the Spirit linger over the waters of chaos and confusion? How long did the Spirit wait for the creative Word of the Lord?
No doubt it was longer than you or I would have been comfortable with. We are, after all, people of action. We do not sit idle in the face of ugliness, injustice, and confusion; we act; we do something…anything…even if it’s wrong.
Stimulus, response. Stimulus, response. Stimulus, response.
We are so often quick to act, quick to judge, and quick to move in the direction of change…any change.
But the supernatural Spirit of the Living God is a spirit of wisdom, and of wondering, and of waiting. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of a better way…
How long did the Spirit hover over the waters of chaos? How long did He wait? …until the creative Word of God was spoken.
How long do we wait in the danger and darkness of our own situations? How long can we linger in ambiguity and ugliness and pain? How long can we “wait on the Lord?”
For the last 18 months, my youngest biological daughter has been quickly descending into an epileptic abyss of physical and mental disability. On Tuesday morning, the surgeon will take up scalpel and saw, slicing through both flesh and bone to detach and remove the right side of her brain. She will go into the hospital able to walk and use both hands and will come out (if she comes out) maimed to one extent or another, for the rest of her life.
And I want to act; I want to rage and curse God and fate, and I want to actively wallow in self-pity. I want to tell everyone that it’s not fair and eat their sympathy while I nurse my outrage.
The flesh wants to act, and I am nothing if not fleshly. I want to get angry and jealous and be selfish. I’m a lifelong Baptist, but I want to get drunk and throw a fit. I want to act out, as far out as I can act.
And if I could get away with it, no kidding, I’d like to murder the doctors who’ve failed us, or least yell and beat them up a little. I'd like to lash out at all the people who say they understand, but haven’t spent the last 18 months worrying about whether or not the next day will be the last. I want to act…and it’s only natural: stimulus, response, stimulus, response, stimulus…
In Galatians 5, Paul explains the extent to which we may be willing to go to make it through our personal pain and feelings of deprivation:
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are adultery, fornication, uncleaness, lewdness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, 21 envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like…
Doing something, anything to address the problem and/or end the hurt, even if it’s wrong…
And Paul continues on to say, “BUT…”:
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. Against such there is no law. 24 And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
…Let us walk in the Spirit who hovered over the waters, and waited patiently in the darkness, listening for the creative Word of God.
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
And laying here in bed, as I type these words into the computer with Kathryn and her mother by my side I breathe in and out and remember that the Kingdom of God is for those who “have ears to hear and eyes to see.”
I hear my daughter’s breath and see the rise and fall of her chest, and I know that I have been blessed. Eleven years ago my wife and I welcomed into the world one the prettiest babies that we had ever seen; and she was a good baby; and we fell in love. And this baby grew to teach us, and our extended family and friends, to live with a compassion for the weak that we might, otherwise, have never known. And she has taught us kindness and patience and how to enjoy simple things. And she has taught us innocence and wonder beyond the span and measure of more “normal” children.
These are not my insights…they are a gift of the hovering Spirit. It’s weird, I know, but waiting on the Lord (Isaiah 40:31) really does strengthen my resolve and better my perspective. I’d be lying if I said that everything was sweetness and patience and light, but, by the Spirit of the Living God, I’d be lying if I said that there was only darkness and no light at all. The Spirit who hovered gives me hope. The Spirit who hovered reminds me that in all of the mess…the mess in my life, the mess in your life, the mess in our neighbors’ lives…in all of the mess of life there still may be found a pattern of purpose and the possibility of praise.
Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, that depressing astrophysicist from a little before, has also attempted something more uplifting:
Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.
If he only knew the rest of the story…the real story…the true story…
From Romans 8:16 we are taught and believe that, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. In a dark and chaotic and seemingly empty world, we don’t curse the darkness; we don’t run or fight or fear. In the Spirit, we are empowered to wait for the command of the God who calls light out of darkness and brings meaning out of senselessness. In this vast and dark and dangerous universe, where so much is violent and random and unfair, I am learning to reflect and meditate (to be still). And, I am learning to contemplate my actions and existence as I pursue the mind of Christ. And I am reminded that the Spirit of order and purpose and creativity is at work in me as I learn to wait in Him. I think that’s kinda cool! It makes me smile to know that I can be more than a product of stimulus and response. I am amazed that this incredibly rare and beautiful ability to wait and wonder and to patiently think things through has been given to me. I am in the Spirit and the Spirit is in me. …The Spirit who supernaturally empowers me to hover, to listen and to wait.
If only we could all learn the way of the Spirit, the supernatural way of listening and waiting, what a wonderful world this could be.
