When God Speaks

I’m no gardener. The surest way to kill your flowers or vegetable plants is to ask me to care for them. So I marvel at those who are gifted at working with all things green and growing. Some gardeners have a practice (whether it is superstition or has merit, I can’t say) of talking to their plants. They’ll lean over their azaleas, daffodils, or young sprouts and whisper, chat . . . even sing. They insist that their words spur growth.

The Bible regularly presents God as one whose words bring things to life. In Genesis, humanity’s early history is ugly. Repeated human rebellion leads to the desolate admission that Abram and Sarai have no children. Sarai is barren. Humanity, as a result of their attempts to make life on their own, is desolate.

As Walter Brueggemann put it, “This family (and with it the whole family of Genesis 1–11) has played out its future and has nowhere else to go. Barrenness is the way of human history. It is an effective metaphor for hopelessness. There is no foreseeable future. There is no human power to invent a future.”

Then, the story turns with these simple words: “The Lord . . . said . . .” (Genesis 12:1). God spoke into the barrenness and chaos. It was as if He said, You’ve done your best, and this is where it has gotten you—now step aside.

Still early in the Genesis story, these words remind us of another time God spoke into darkness and chaos. Before God began to create, the “earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters.” Into nothing, “God said . . . ”

God spoke and light erupted, vegetation blossomed, humans appeared. This is still what happens whenever God speaks.

Taken from “Our Daily Journey”