First this: God created the Heavens and the Earth—all you see, all you don’t see. Earth was a soup of nothingness, a bottomless emptiness, and inky blackness. God’s Spirit brooded like a bird above the watery abyss.(Genesis 1:1-2) MSG

Let this same attitude and purpose and [humble] mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus: [let Him be your example in humility:] Who, although being essentially one with God and in the form of God [possessing the fullness of the attributes which make God God], did not think this equality with God was a thing to be eagerly grasped or retained, but stripped Himself of all privileges and rightful dignity, so as to assume the guise of a servant, in that He became like men and was born a human being. (Philippians 2: 5-7) AMP

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And when He came up out of the water, at once he saw the heavens torn open and the Holy Spirit like a dove coming down [to enter] into Him; And there came a voice out from within heaven, You are My Beloved Son; in You I am well pleased. Immediately the Holy Spirit [from within] drove Him out into the wilderness (desert). And He stayed in the wilderness (desert) forty days, being tempted [the while] by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered to Him. (Mark 1:9-13) AMP

I enjoy study and the tools I have to make it possible: Along with multiple versions of scripture, I enjoy dictionaries, concordances, commentaries, maps of bible lands, and cultural study bibles. Yes, even Google, and the websites available to my cell phone. A problem for me, though, is how chaotic my study area looks with books piled on books, notes everywhere and, especially, my frustration with websites that intersperse information I want with multiple advertisements between paragraphs of what I need.

As the word study this week is “chaos”, my 1946 dictionary definition: a condition of utter disorder and confusion, as the primordial state of the universe describes (Genesis 1:1-2) And: extreme confusion and disorder, describes my study area and my frustration.

What steadies and encourages me is that God brought order out of the chaos in the beginning, and then, Jesus was willing to enter into participation with us to experience the same confusion and disorder we do. (Philippians 2:5-7) He, too, was tempted like us in the small, daily things. (Hebrews 4:15) Even after Jesus comes up out of the water, and the Holy Spirit, like a dove, (perhaps a reference to Genesis 1:2), comes down and enters him, Jesus is still sent to the wilderness to experience extreme temptation by Satan in the large things that also tempt us.

I love John 13-17 where Jesus shows the disciples how to serve each other, gives them a new commandment to love one another, describes his obedient relationship with his Father, and promises the Holy Spirit who will live inside us to remind us of all Jesus said and more, and to give us the inner power to obey Jesus’s commands, Then Jesus prays for not only the disciples who are present, but for us who come after them. Jesus also tells them honestly that they and we will have trouble in this world. He never promised easy; he only promised “with” (to be with us).

Jesus calls us to participate with him by entering into each other’s lives in the chaos that we all deal with sometimes. We can do it by service, time spent listening and especially faithfully praying for those whom we know are going through a wearying time of any sort of disorder and confusion.