Jeremy L. Berg

Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

My blog has been a bit dry and spotty this summer, but not because I’ve been idle. I’ve been preaching on some of the big water-themed stories in Scripture this summer and working on manuscript called Spirit On The Water, tipping my hat to a favorite Bob Dylan song. I will share some excerpts in the coming days from these chapters.

Chapter outline so far:

1 – Waters of Creation – God brings order from chaos and creative potential to people

2 – Waters of Wrath – God judges evil and offers new beginnings

3 – Waters of Liberation – God hears the cries of the oppressed and acts on their behalf

4 – Waters of Inheritance – God brings us from scarcity to a land of inheritance

Here’s an excerpt from chapter 1, The Waters of Creation.

In his song Spirit on the Water, Bob Dylan draws from Genesis 1 to sing about the order and chaos, the holy longing, common heartache and sleepless nights that so often characterize romantic relationships. He sings: 

Spirit on the water, 

darkness on the face of the deep,

I keep thinking of you baby,

I can’t hardly sleep.

Unlike Dylan who can’t fall asleep, the Hebrew poet suggests that we can fall asleep even while the waters churn around us like a bubbling cauldron of uncertainties precisely because the Spirit is on the Water providing the calm reassurance we need.

The Spirit is on the water, and the waters are no match for Him. God hovers over it all with a gracious gaze and readiness to partner with us in pushing back all the crud of life on this spinning ball of organized chaos we call Earth. God speaks into the deep darkness that haunts our dreams and the light of His love and power emerges. God speaks into the great emptiness that gnaws at us in secret, and longs to fill that void within with His divine purpose and presence. 

Centuries after this creation poem was written down, the Spirit who hovered over the primordial waters would take on human flesh and hover over the boat of some anxious fisherman on the unsettled Sea of Galilee. Again, God would open his mouth and speak the divine command, “Peace, be still!” The Chaos would obey and order would be reestablished for those twelve awestruck witnesses. But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves.

Let’s return to Dylan’s wild and untamed romance above that evokes the Spirit on the Water. On closer inspection, it would seem that the reason the subject of the song “can’t hardly sleep” is not out of fear of some impending doom, but rather due to the butterflies and giddy excitement that keeps a boy awake all night after the magic of a first date with a new found crush. “I keep thinking of you baby…I can’t hardly sleep.” This leads us to the second major theme of the creation narrative. 

Divine Potential and Creative Possibilities

The creation poem is not just about contending with the “darkness on the face of the deep.” It’s about the bright sunshine of a new morning and the raw potential and endless possibilities each new day offers. Because the divine Spirit hovers over the waters, anything is possible!  The Spirit who flutters over the deep doesn’t just push back the chaos; He brings forth new creation! 

The first six new mornings of the creation story bring forth galaxies and stars, Saturn and its rings, lightning and thunder, volcanoes and lava, pineapples and sweetcorn, kangaroos and ostriches, whales and sea turtles, and capping it all off with human beings who bring with them laughter and flatulence, poetry and bad puns, a glass of wine and long walks on the beach that leads to cooing babies and endless nights at the Little League field. The Spirit on the Water is generative and regenerating Spirit.

The Spirit on the Water is like the explosive potential of newfound love, and all that might follow from that first date. No wonder Bob Dylan can’t hardly sleep thinking of his baby. This means the primordial abyss or “face the deep” over which the Spirit of God hovers speaks not just to the disorder that needs ordering, but also the raw potential of a wet lump of clay that eagerly awaits a creative artist’s hand. 

Need I remind us that our own births were precipitated by that mysterious moment when our mother’s “water broke”? That our borning cry was our victory chant as the dark and mysterious waters of our mother’s womb gave us up to the bright light of our new dawn? The Spirit-Breath on the Water  certainly hovers over every birthing room, ready to breathe that divine wind into the nostrils of every newborn babe. 

This metaphor (that seems more literal than a metaphor) goes even deeper for me. While my wife gave birth to our first born in a conventional hospital bed hooked to machines, our next two children were brought into this world through the waters of a birthing tub. You’ll just have to take my word for it that if ever the Spirit of Creative Potential and Divine Possibilities hovered over some hallowed body of water, it was over that birthing tub wherein through pain and struggle, pushing and screaming, I watched two new lives emerge from chaotic waters teeming with limitless creative potential and divine possibilities. 

Each person is themselves a microcosm of this water-and-spirit creation drama. Up to 60% of the human adult body is water. According to one source, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. God then breathes into every person the spirit-breath of life (Gen. 2:7), and with it comes a God-given purpose and power to create and bring order of our little corner of the cosmos. Perhaps this is why Jesus told Nicodemus that no one can understand and participate in God-reality—the Kingdom of God—“unless they are born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5). There they are again; the Spirit is on the water!