November 13, 2016 Isaiah 65:17-25 If you feel like you’re teetering on the edge of an abyss right now, if you’re having trouble seeing anything but darkness — Take heart. We’ve been here before. In the beginning, in the very beginning, before God created the heavens and the earth, there was chaos. One of my favorite renderings of the creation story puts it this way, “Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness.” And over the chaos of this watery abyss, God’s Spirit brooded. In the beginning, everything was tumult and messiness and darkness, and God sat right there over it for a while, just brooding. But then God breathed. And God began to imagine. And God began to bring life out of the chaos. And even before creation was finished, even while the life and light were just beginning to show through, God was able to see and pronounce the goodness that was there: “It is good,” God promised. Even knowing creation was going to do a whole l