From the minute the alarm clock shrieks, we race from demand
to demand, deadline to deadline. Our kid
yells that he won’t get dressed; we’re out of milk and have to schlep to get it. The email piles up and the phone won’t stop
ringing. Heaven forbid a kid gets sick
or the car needs new struts—then, life is simply overwhelming. When does the “to do” list ever get
done? When does it get easy?
The world was turbulent like that once, says the Torah. “When God was about to create heaven and
earth, the earth was a chaos, unformed, and on the chaotic waters’ face there
was darkness” (Genesis 1:1-2, The
Torah: A Women’s Commentary, URJ
Press). The world was “tohu vavohu,”
words impossible to translate but evoking a proto-world that is unformed, stormy,
writhing. The word “t’hom,” translated
here as “chaotic waters” and often as “the deep,” evokes the Mesopotamian
goddess Tiamat, primordial and violent goddess of the sea.But our God, Elohim, brings order to the madness, creating the world in a thoughtful, organized, highly structured way. God tames the turbulence and brings it under control. How does God first appear in the Torah? “Then the ruach/wind of God glided over the face of the waters.” God’s presence is a soothing breeze, a cosmic breath, the spirit of order. God exhales across the madness and settles everything down.
When life is too chaotic, when it all becomes too much, remember what God did in the very beginning: breathe.
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