Creation Words

This week I started reading Genesis (very inductively, I might add). I've been hanging out in the gospels for this whole past year, and I felt like it was time to get back to some good OT.

What strikes me most as I've lingered in the first chapter for a couple days is this: God speaks. He speaks into chaos and things happen: "God said...and it was so" is a common refrain throughout those six days of creation. He speaks and order appears from chaos, the void is replaced by life. God speaks.

So I've been thinking about the power of words. God speaks to create. The Living Word comes to redeem, to again-make, to re-create. Words are powerful, written or spoken...and especially embodied.

Where I've wandered as I've thought about this is that the power of words and their innate intelligibility is a part of the creational-goodness of God. We only speak and understand one another because God speaks and is understood. We are given the opportunity to speak words of life to one another because God has ordained it to be so.

All our words are borrowed words. We only speak derivitively off of God's speaking. We are only stewards of the words that we use, not their original source. There is a grave and glad response-ability in that. We are invited to respond to the One Great Speaker with our own versions of His words of Life and Goodness.

All our words are substantitive and 'real' only to the degree that they echo God's creational words and the redemptive Living Word. All other words that we use to destroy life or manipulate others will pass away into nothing. But words that echo this initial "LET THERE BE!" will themselves echo into all eternity. Words can bring forth or destroy life. We participate in God's again-making when we speak truth in love (be it a kind word or a harsh rebuke). We participate in the Un-Maker's work when we speak words of destruction, words of un-doing. Words of these type go against the grain of the universe, they will melt in the Great and Terrible Day of Revealing. It will be as straw.

It is a childhood lie that names can never hurt us. Words have power. God's initial word continues to echo through me today, upholding me as I type behind this keyboard. Other words that I have received throughout my life cause me to walk with a limp. But it all starts here, in Genesis 1.

God speaks. We are given to be speakers, too. Are the words of our mouths (and the meditations of our hearts from whence those words come) faithful echoes of the creational "LET THERE BE!" of God? The gentle rebuke from my friend Marshall after the last couple of days' posts press me to pause and consider the faithfulness of my words...