Selah2020: Pause and Reflect

[This is one in a series of devotional reflections prepared for Horley Baptist Church during June 2022]

The computer is on, the software is open, the fingers are poised above the keyboard and … nothing. The deadline for publication is approaching, still no flash of inspiration. Perhaps we should heed the words of Nehemiah 5 v8: They kept quiet, because they could find nothing to say. In many circumstances that is wise advice but occasionally nothing is not enough.

In the musical “The Sound of Music”, the governess Maria sings that “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could”. But is she right?

We can immediately think of the Genesis account of creation; the earth was without form and void, a mass of nothingness. God created the earth and all the creatures therein from nothing. Of course, when Moses compiled that account he knew nothing of anti-matter, sub-atomic particles or other entities that may exist where there appears to be nothing.

For Moses, the heavens consisted of the sun, the moon and those stars that are visible to the naked eye. He wrote within the context of his knowledge and that of his contemporaries. How might Galileo with his telescope and observations of the planets have written about creation?

It makes for an interesting diversion to speculate about how our God relates what we now know about the wider universe. Did he create other worlds with their own characteristics? Is our Earth the only sin-ridden one that requires his attention? In short, do we have a great big God or is your God too small?

The Bible makes much ado about nothing. The word is mentioned in 52 of the 66 books of the Bible; it is used descriptively as in the creation story, figuratively within lifestyle recommendations and warnings, and as an assessment of status. Here are some examples:

He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.
Job 26 v7
Those who give to the poor will lack nothing, but those who close their eyes to them receive many curses.
Proverbs 28:27
Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people’s labour is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing?
Habakkuk 2:13
For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.
1 Timothy 6:7

Jesus Christ made himself nothing so that he could make something of us^[1]. In 1776 Augustus Toplady summed up our status with his hymn ‘Rock of Ages’ which includes these lines:

Nothing in my hands I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling.

With God nothing is enough.

[1] Philippians 2 v7

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