The God With Dirty Hands

The setting is chaos. Darkness cloaked the waters. The earth was formless. No beauty. No order. No color. No creativity. No design. Just chaos. And God, in the midst of chaos instituted order, purpose, meaning, usefulness, light and life.

After separating the sky from the land and creating vegetation, after creating the sun and the moon to govern day and night, after creating flying creatures, swimming creatures and land creatures, after creating all of that simply by his Word, God decided to create a man and a woman.

However, his method was about to change. His method was going to establish that his desire to relate to men and women was going to be different from the way he related to the rest of creation. He wasn’t going to create by his Word again. He was about to become very hands-on, very intimately acquainted with the people he created. Creation was created to display God’s power and creativity and was created for his pleasure, but you and I were created for more. We weren’t created merely to be admired. We weren’t created merely to serve a utilitarian purpose, but you and I were created to be in an ongoing, dynamic relationship with the God of the universe.

The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
— Genesis 2:7

God stooped down and scooped up dirt from the ground in order to create Adam and after getting his hands dirty, he breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life and Adam came to life.

This wouldn’t be the last time we see God get his hands dirty. Fast forward thousands of years and we see those same hands on Good Friday. Yet this time they are not covered in dirt but in blood. The One who was there at the beginning and The One for whom all things hold together had seemingly lost control. When Jesus breathed his last, the ground shook and darkness covered the skies. No beauty. No design. Just chaos.

But everything changed on that early Sunday morning as Jesus rose with the keys of death and hell in those nail-scarred hands. God once again instituted order, purpose, meaning, usefulness, light and life out of the void. In fact, it was the plan all along.

I wonder what God could do with your chaos and darkness? Fortunately for us, he’s willing to get his hands a little dirty.