The Desolate and Empty Earth

The General Idea of the Lecture

The lecture contemplates God’s creative and renewing work through the image of the desolate and empty earth mentioned in the Book of Genesis, and how God transformed it from nothingness and darkness into beauty, order, and life. This image does not concern the first creation only, but extends to the life of the human being, the sinner, societies, nations, and every soul that seems without hope.

The Spiritual and Educational Essence

• God is able to bring beauty out of desolation, light out of darkness, and life out of death.
• The earth did not despair of its condition, and God did not despair of it, but worked in it with calmness and gradual steps until it was completed.
• Likewise, the soul of the sinful human being may be desolate and empty of virtues, but when it surrenders itself to God’s work, He creates in it light and life.
• Salvation is not a superficial repair, but a new creation: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.”
• Many examples confirm this hope: persons, cities, nations, and even enemies of faith were transformed by God’s grace into saints and heroes of faith.
• What matters is not the beauty of the beginning, but the beauty of the end; not what we start with, but what we end up with through God.
• True hope does not look at human weakness, but at the power of God that is able to change everything.
• Those who wait for the Lord renew their strength and rise up with wings like eagles, because light does not come from the human being, but from God.

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