The Holy Spirit's Role in Creation
As I was preparing to teach a class at church about caring for creation, I spent some time reflecting on God in three persons as creator. I often think of God the Father when I read, “In the beginning, God....” I usually forget to consider Jesus as creator, though both John and Paul write of how all things were created through Him (John 1:3, Colossians 1:16). I recently wrote a blog about Jesus as the Word, and how the early universe contained sound.
Breath
But what about the Holy Spirit? The word for “Spirit” can also mean “breath,” so it’s profound to think of Jesus as the Word and the Spirit as the breath, and to think of how God “breathed” the breath of life into the first human (Genesis 2:7).
Hovering
Also, there’s something fascinating in the description of what the Spirit was doing in the very beginning of time. The writer of Genesis depicts the Spirit of God as “hovering over the waters” (Genesis 1:2). The word for “hovering,” rahap, can also mean “trembling.”
The trembling makes me think of the energy that existed before there was any matter. Ripples in the energy transformed in the Big Bang into tendrils of gasses that eventually ignited into stars. So I think of the Holy Spirit hovering over that trembling energy.
Another use of the word rahap, which I discovered in this article, gives a fascinating picture of the Holy Spirit’s possible intentions and feelings during creation. The writer of Deuteronomy says that God shielded and guarded His people, “Like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them....” (Deut 32:11). The word to show how the eagle “hovers” is the same word as the one used to describe the Holy Spirit’s “hovering” over the darkness in the beginning.
What a beautiful way of picturing the Holy Spirit in creation: trembling like a mother bird fluttering from side to side over her eggs, watching with eagle eyes over the energy, spreading her wings in protection, expectant, ready to nurture that life, to provide for every open beak.