We watched my daughter hop from rock to rock. While the kids were home over Christmas, we dug out old home videos to embarrass our daughters in front of husband or boyfriend, respectively. One of the videos showed our oldest about age 7 gleefully hopping around the creek below our cabin in Oak Creek Canyon, Arizona. I remembered doing the same when I was her age. These days I still go to the creek, but I’m usually carrying a fishing rod and I step much more carefully.
In fact, as any reader of this blog might guess, I’ve now floated on or waded in any number of rivers around the US and Canada. The water calls and I can’t stay away. Time by or in a river is essential for me.
This blog is inspired by the fact that a River seems to be one of the keys to Scripture. From Genesis to Revelation, a River, sometimes specifically called “The River of God” keeps springing up as an image of God’s presence and blessing. So this Sunday I’m returning to and enhancing a sermon series from many years ago which focuses on that River of God in the Bible.
Of course, the beginning of rivers is water. The Gospel lesson for Sunday, Matthew 3:13-17 shows us the Spirit coming down upon Jesus as He was baptized in the Jordan River. But I’m choosing as my sermon text Genesis 1:1-10, where we see the Spirit first hovering over water at the beginning of creation.
That hovering Spirit, both over Jesus at His baptism and over the primal waters, is God gently present, watching and caring. That word to “hover” implies a mother bird caring for her young. That is how God loves His creation and calls it into fulfillment and completion. That is how God called His own Son into the fullness of His mission to save us.
The Spirit of God is still hovering over the waters of our lives, whether still and beautiful or deep and troubled. God broods over us, lifting, helping, encouraging, saving, making us the people He wants us to be. May that Spirit rest gently over whatever waters you are in right now.