Restore Voice: The Speaking Voice
The point? God creates goodness by speaking, and the speaking voice of God is alive in our day!
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)
Word |wəːd| noun : 1 a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, used with others (or sometimes alone) to form a sentence and typically shown with a space on either side when written or printed. (New American Oxford Dictionary)
I have long been fascinated by the voice. Not the singing competition in the United States that has singlehandedly resurrected the tired format American Idol drove into the ground (Side note: Fascinating that a laser-focus on the development of contestants voices in an easily accessible format, plus let’s face it, fun judges, made this type of competition popular once again), but rather the speaking voice: the creative identity imprinted deep within our souls by God, the Imago Dei within us, desiring to breathe life, vitality, and even creation into being.
In one of my favorite Donald Miller lines of all time, he writes “I like the part of the Bible that talks about God speaking the world into existence, as though everything we see and feel were sentences from his mouth, all the wet of the world his spit” (A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, p. 86). Anchoring the poetic beauty of Miller’s words is a deeply theological truth: God creates by speaking. Moses, the likely author of Genesis, employed a Hebraic form of poetry throughout the creation account found in Genesis 1, using a crescendoing repetition of the phrase “And God said” to initiate the creative act, followed by a similar refrain that proclaimed the finished creation, “And it was so,” culminated with a satisfied reflection on the brilliance of what had been spoken into existence: “And God saw that it was good.” 7 times throughout Genesis 1 the phrase “And God said” is repeated, echoed 7 times by the reflective refrain “And God saw that it was good.” The phrase “And it was so” appears 6 times, belying a similar emphasis.
The point? God creates goodness by speaking, and the speaking voice of God is alive in our day!
To quote A.W. Tozer:
“It is the nature of God to speak, to communicate His thoughts to others…A word is a medium by which thoughts are expressed, and the application of the term to the Eternal Son leads us to believe that self- expression is inherent in the Godhead, that God is forever seeking to speak Himself out to His creation. The whole Bible supports the idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but God is speaking. He is by nature continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking voice” (The Pursuit of God, p. 73)
There are many important implications spilling out from this truth which we will explore at length over the coming weeks, but I want to first hone in on one of the most foundational: The voice of God uses the present tense. Creation wasn’t an act restricted to a once-off miraculous word from God; creation is taking place within my garden right now as my jeweled-tone beet seeds push themselves through the earth in response to the voice of God bringing them to life.
A more cosmic example, perhaps: While I respect that some Christ-followers still have reservations about the scientific validity behind the existence of the Big Bang Theory, fearing (falsely) that it supports a belief in evolution, the scientific community increasingly is united in its support of this theory as the most likely explanation for the existence of the universe. The Wikipedia entry for the Big Bang (accessed March 27th, 2015) explains the following: “The Big Bang is not an explosion of matter moving outward to fill an empty universe. Instead, space itself expands with time everywhere and increases the physical distance between two co-moving points. In other words, the Big Bang is not an explosion in space, but rather an expansion of space.”
My heart begins to be faster as I consider what this Wikipedia entry suggests. Space itself is continually expanding over time, everywhere? Right here and now as I type this word? Perhaps it is true then, that “God is speaking. He is by His nature continuously articulate. He fills the world with His speaking voice” (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, p. 73).
And if this is true, that God really is speaking, right here and now, then what must my response be as a human being made in the Image of God, the pinnacle act of God’s creative voice? I must find my voice, and speak in response to God’s creative initiative, towards a co-labouring (rather, a ‘co-speaking’) of the restoration of all things.