First There Was Silence

If I could write what existed before “In the beginning” (Gen 1:1), I’d write “before the beginning there was silence.” Before the Spirit of God moved over the surface of the waters (Gen 1:2) there was silence. When God was alone in the formless void and darkness and His Spirit was not moving yet, there was silence. Before the Word spoke, “Let there be light” there was silence.

It seems that God’s Spirit moved first and it must have made a sound because Jesus talked about the sound of the Spirit to Nicodemus in John 3:8. He said, “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” And similarly in Acts 2:2 Luke writes, “And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent, rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. ...And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit...” (Acts 2:4) So we can surmise that the sound of the Holy Spirit moving over the waters was like a strong wind blowing.

Then after the Spirit moved God spoke. Once He spoke then He spoke more and more. He called the light good. He called the light day. He called the darkness night. He said, “Let there be an expanse...” and so on.

There is no way for us to know how long God existed before there was sound. How long was He in silence? Was He merely thinking? Or was He contemplating the creation He was about to call into being? Was He creating in His mind?

The creation story in Genesis chapter 1 relates that God created certain things on each day and at the end of each day He saw that it was good. Not only was it good He loved it. How do we know He loved it? Jesus told Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world...” (John 3:16)

Because Jesus is the Word all that was created was created by the Word. Therefore He was there in the beginning. He knew that God loved what He created. The apostle John wrote in John 1:1-3, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”

It seems to me that God was–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–in a pause so to speak before He began to move and make sounds and create. And that pause is called silence. In the silence God was complete. He was Absolute.

Copyright Gloria Fisher 2011
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