Time travel. A friend shared the plot of a book she was reading recently, and it had to do with the heroin somehow being transported in time to the 1700s. She was involved in the Revolution, and knew how it would turn out in the end.  Let’s do some time traveling of our own for a moment. Let’s go back to the very beginning of time. Genesis 1:1-2 says that in the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, that the earth was formless and void. That term formless stuck out in my mind. I think back to my Ceramics 110 class in college, in which we took globs of raw clay out of big plastic garbage cans, and tried to form useful or aesthetic items out of the clay. Then, I think of my life, and the lives of others before God’s touch (Ephesians 2:12b) and after God’s touch, and I get it.

            Our lives without God are just like the earth was without God’s touch- formless, empty and dark. Then God steps into the scene, and what was dark gets flooded with the light of God’s Truth. What was empty is now filled (Ephesians 3:19) with the presence of our eternal Savior and Lord, who says he will never leave us. And what (and who) was previously without form starts to take shape and purpose. We begin to become the person God had in mind for us to be from before time.  Like the lump of clay is formless before the potter starts the process of creation, so we are formless before God. God waits for the invitation to actively re-create in us who we really are. We are formless, and God takes that formless lump of nothing and molds it into something. He molds us into the image of Christ. We wait for Christ to be formed in us (Galatians 4:19). That is the goal. God longs for the opportunity to take our formless, empty, dark existence and form us into the image of the living Christ! We ourselves also groan for that.

            Most of us have heard the comparisons of the potter and the clay (Isaiah 64:8), and the silversmith burning the dross from the silver (Isaiah 1:25). There is another analogy that illustrates the formlessness of those without God. In Psalm 1, those without God are termed as wicked. Verse 4 says that the wicked are like the chaff (of wheat or grain) that the wind blows away. Think of chaff. Does it really have a form or substance to it? No. It is without either of those, and that is what allows it to just float off when thrown in the air. The kernel of grain, by contrast, has a definite shape and substance to it that causes it to stay, or fall on the threshing floor, then be gathered, for the purpose of either being eaten or used for seed to produce more grain. We are like that! Once formless, empty and dark… but now the light of the world (Matthew 5:14), filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians5: 18b), and in the continual process of having Christ formed in us (Galatians 4:19). Take that! (The next time the world or your enemy tries to tell you all is for naught, or you are nothing).