The ball dropped three days ago, yet I already feel behind the ball.

We are finally slowing down after a few weeks of holiday travel and excitement which preceded a full eight days of intense college ministry. Even the slowing down feels like a quick pit stop to frantically patch up some popped tires, refill with gas, and get back on the track.

While others seem to be stepping into the New Year with selected theme words of purpose, goals, and stocked pantries, I feel like I am starting in a deficit on all fronts. Don’t get me wrong, I am deeply drawn to intentionality and planning, I simply have not had space enough to do laundry, let alone come up with a laundry list of goals and plans.

While flying home late last night, the Lord was so gracious to use one of my favorite authors, Eugene Peterson, to speak hope into my tired soul. In this particular chapter of his book Under the Unpredictable Plant,  Peterson has been talking extensively about the way that God uses the storms in our lives to expose us and realign ourselves with Him.

“They {the sea storms} expose us to what we cannot manage. We are returned to primordial chaos, to the tohu and bohu of Genesis 1, where we submit our lives to the world-making word of God. These storms are not simply bad weather; they are the exposure of our lives to the brooding, hovering wind/spirit of God. In the storm  we are reduced to what is elemental, and the ultimate elemental is God. And so prayer emerges as the single act that has to do with God.” 

While I am not experiencing any particular storm, I do feel haggard from the continual exposure to the weather that is this season of ministry and life. Three sons, each in one sport they love, fills their cup, but tends to drain mine. Our calling to college ministry keeps us on the front lines of the gospel advancing, but also exposes us to the shrapnel of the spiritual battlefield. Doing women’s ministry in our local Church is my dream job, but it has a way of exposing all the ways that I am not the women’s director I dream I could be.

If I am honest, I feel weary and worn. I know in my mind that these are the best kinds of weary or worn, but they still cause my soul to sag and my hands to drop. Rather than looking out on a new year and a new decade with hope and excitement, I have been looking at them through eyes of very real powerlessness and insufficiency.

Peterson’s reminder of two harsh Hebrew words strangely brought me hope.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:1-2.

The Hebrew word tohu, translated above as “without form,” can also be translated as confusion, chaos, emptiness, desolation, and empty space. Likewise, the Hebrew word bohu, translated above as “void,” can also mean emptiness, vacuity, and an undistinguishable ruin.

The canvas on which God chose to work His creation was chaos, confusion, emptiness, desolation. Figuratively speaking, those were His media in creating everything ex nihilo, out of nothing.

God did not start with a Create-by-Number kit, unfolding an instruction manual and opening His fresh paint pots. Our powerful, self-existent, all-powerful Trinitarian God took emptiness and made everything. He ordered chaos with His voice.

In Genesis 1:1, bara, the Hebrew word translated “created,” can also mean to shape and to bring about.  Our God is the cosmic chaos-shaper, the ordinal order-maker.

Oh, what hope that brings me as I stare into what feel like the emptiness, chaos, and questions of a new year (I am not even letting myself thing about a new decade)!

Oh, what pressure is released from control-hungry, expectation-starving soul knowing that my God can order and shape whatever whoops, whirls, swirls and storms are on this new year’s topographical map!

I am not behind. I am exactly where I need to be: powerless but being in-dwelt by the All-powerful One, insufficient but significantly held by the All-sufficient One.