Daily Devotions
Friday, May 29, 2026
This devotion pairs with this weekend’s Lutheran Hour sermon, which can be found at lhm.org.
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2)
She wasn’t even trying to offer a recommendation. She was just describing it, witnessing to what the book had done for her: “I was so happy it ended the way it did,” she explained. “I just closed the book when I finished it, and cried.”
Usually, when I hear somebody raving about a new book, I’m skeptical. I don’t assume it would do the same for me. But in this case, when she described it, I knew right away I wanted to read it, not just because of her enthusiastic testimony, but because I knew the author. I hadn’t read this book, but I had read another book by the same author, so I knew what she had described would be true, not just for her, but true also for me.
The first verse of the Bible announces God as the Author who made everything out of nothing. The second verse describes the initial condition of God’s creation. And it uses an odd pair of words to do so: “formless and void,” or as other translations have it, “waste” and “empty.” Elsewhere in the Bible, these words describe a wasted land (see Deuteronomy 32:10), or an abandoned city (see Isaiah 24:10), or a kingdom in ruins (see Isaiah 34:11). It’s a strange way to describe the unformed earth, waiting for God’s next creative move.
Why put it in these terms?
It may have been for the benefit of the first hearers of Genesis, for people who were living in a wasteland. And some days their lives felt formless and void (see Numbers 20:3-5). Genesis was written to assure them that the God who is with them in the wilderness is the same God who once made an unformed beginning into a joy-filled end. They are dealing with the same Author.
If you are like me, some of your days feel formless and empty. I don’t feel that way all the time, but in the moments I do, I need a witness who knows our Author. Genesis is one such witness. The opening chapter recalls how, out of a formless void, God made everything “very good.”
Jesus, of course, is the greater Witness, God’s most friendly recommendation. But He does more than rave about God’s book. He is the Word who writes the book, the Author become human to rescue us from our formless and empty storylines.
God can do this because He’s not like us. He doesn’t sit alone and wait for inspiration. God writes out of generous abundance. He creates from the already full joy of the eternal story of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (see John 17:24).
For God, the story has no beginning and no end. But He made a beginning so we could share in His joy, so that we could help write new chapters and episodes and spin-offs. That’s part of what it means to be made in God’s image. We are made to relate and create, to collaborate as God’s co-authors, God’s witnesses—a friendly recommendation to a world that needs Him, so that their ending would be in Him, and His joy would be ours, and what has always been true for Him will also become true for us.
WE PRAY: Dear Jesus, out of sin and death and cross, You brought resurrection, forgiveness, and life. Thank You for writing me out of the formless void and into Your Father’s “very good.” Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Rev. Dr. Michael Zeigler, Speaker for The Lutheran Hour.
Reflection Questions:
- Have you ever cried (or had to choke back tears) at the end of a good book, story, or movie?
- How is reading a long book an act of tentative faith in an author?
- How is God revealing Himself to you as the only completely trustworthy Author?
Today's Readings:
Psalms 27-29John 11:1-29
Archive
All | 2026 | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 |Large Print
