Here Hovering

It’s 3:30am on Sunday, and I am awake.

The phone has buzzed several times, and I know it is darkness calling.

Saturday night is attack time for the enemy. The Father of lies saves his best ones for Saturday nights to try to pollute the chance of Sunday morning resurrection.

Sickness, sin, death, and the septic tank not working all shake hands at 3:30am on Sunday.

So, I pray in the darkness without turning on the lights. 

It reminds me of the original darkness. “The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.”

The chasm of Saturday nights feels like it is without form and void. Who knows what will come out of that darkness?

The world is an ugly place. Ugliness slinks best in darkness. Several months ago, a little boy detailed the darkness of his Saturday night: “My mom’s boyfriend was choking her out, but we ran out of the house into the snow. We hid behind all the bushes here along this road. I could hear him yelling and following us. I laid under that bush there and hoped it was dark enough that he could not see me.”

There’s no hope in darkness. It swallows everything mercilessly.

But, even in the original formless void, right in the midst of the darkness, “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

Many years ago, I photographed a butterfly. It had this picture painted on its wings- a black, formless void, with a blue swirling Spirit of God hovering, and little sparks of orange embers preparing to burst into light. 

Author Hannah Anderson has written, “Beautiful things draw us beyond themselves to a reality greater than either of us.”

As soon as the hovering Spirit of God said, “Let there be light,” there was, and it illuminated all the beautiful things in this world. Beautiful butterflies point us to a God who is Light in the darkness. Things of beauty are His promises to us that darkness cannot last.

So, here we are. It is 3:30am on a Sunday, and I’m a pastor’s wife afloat in the formless void of the darkness of hurting people and a fallen world. What hope can I give them? What hope is there in the darkness?

Well, the good Lord is here hovering. 

At God’s word, the original darkness splintered into thousands of invisible shards. We do not know how long it will be before He shatters darkness once and for all. But we do know He is here, hovering. He is the One who has done it before. His is the day- radiant with light- but His also the night, with its yawning blackness of uncertainty.

Even at 3:30am, we can trust that dawn is coming, and with it, resurrection.