Genesis
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
New Years Day. January 1st, 2025. A year unwritten, as fresh as the newly fallen snow blanketing the world outside my window. A new year is like a new book. The story has yet to be told. It is filled with wonder and hope and expectation. You don’t know what will happen, what mountains will be climbed, what hopes fulfilled, what characters—for better or for worse—may enter your life. Or what monsters may climb out of the deep and turn your life upside down.
I was up at 5 am this morning, wanting to write before the beautiful chaos of my family began. In my ideal days, I wake early, surrounded by darkness, praying and reading my Bible. Reading Gensis 1 seemed a fitting place to start at the beginning of a new year since it starts at the beginning. Genesis says before the creation of the world, the earth was formless and empty, that darkness was over the surface of the deep, and that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.
A world unformed. A story yet to be told.
I like to walk after I read if I can squeeze in the time. As I headed outside, bundled in my black fuzzy coat, ears guarded from the biting cold in my double-layered beanie and fingers nestled in my white winter gloves, the world felt empty, silent and still. Clouds somehow illuminated against a black sky silently hung above my head, lit by an unseen moon while the snow beneath my feet crunched ever so slightly with each quiet step. The snow itself hadn’t been touched, not a footprint or tire track had traversed its covering. The world was asleep. It felt unformed and unmade, as unwritten as the year itself, while darkness seemed to hover over its surface. What would this year hold? I wondered, thoughts dancing through my mind about the good and the bad, both hopeful in the unknown but also, after almost forty years of existence, all too aware of the bombs that could drop at any moment. At work we were taking care of a patient who lost her daughter in a car accident they were both involved in. A bomb dropped to alter life in an instant. And just yesterday my son was at the doctor’s office, where x-rays were ordered. While it could be nothing, the doctor also implied more serious things could be going on. I’m both hopeful for what will come in a new year and acutely aware of the depth of challenges that could turn our lives in a moment.
As my feet left tracks in the snow, as my breath puffed in and out and my cheeks stung again the biting January air, as my body made one silent lap around our dark and slumbering neighborhood and then another, the freshly laid snow was now marred by tracks. My own footprints, left behind by the proceeding lap. Those tracks were joined by another set as I made yet another lap. And suddenly, beneath my feet two sets of tracks laid bare in the snow.
And even though I was very aware that each set of tracks were my own, they reminded me of another set of tracks which came before me two thousand years ago.
As the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, God began to create. And create. And create. And at first it was good. But after all creation, after light and life and flowers and fish and sunsets and snowflakes, he created us. And he deemed it very good. And then we sinned and in an instant shattered all the goodness He’d created. And as far as I know, God never called anything else in creation outside of himself “good” again. But, God is no longer hovering over the waters. God came down, became a man, and put tracks on the earth. He walked through pain and heartache, through adoration and rejection, through worship and torture. He learned to create with wood as a carpenter. He attended weddings and funerals. As a baby he was exiled and as an adult he was praised. And then murdered. And in all that time, he made a lot of tracks. Nearly 20,000 miles worth. Through highs and lows. Through praise and mourning. Until death on a cross.
As I looked at the tracks I’d left in the snow and thought about what this unwritten year might hold, a gentle peace settled into my soul. This year might bring some really amazing highs. It might also bring some unexpectedly terrible lows.
But no matter what, I won’t be making tracks alone. Because the Spirit of God, who has already laid down tracks, will be walking with me.
And so I pray that as this new year begins, as you think about and hope for the year to come, you know no matter where this year takes you, you don’t walk alone. No matter what diagnosis is made or what hard-fought victory is won (or lost) or if the empty space in the bed next to you is ever filled, you are not alone, because you have a God who loves you enough to have laid down tracks, to walk the untraveled path with you and to ultimately lead us all into His everlasting care.