The Deep

by Molly Baskette | published on Dec 22, 2025

Discussion Questions 

  1. Read the story of creation in Genesis 1. Then read the devotional below, “The Deep.” 
  1. Do you remember being scared of the dark depths as a child—perhaps in the middle of the night, perhaps gazing at the vast ocean? Have you been scared of the deep as a grownup? 
  1. When have you been renewed by the deep? 
  1. How is God hovering over your life these days? 

Devotional 

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. – Genesis 1:1 (NIV) 

The deep, the dark, the abyss. The source of childhood nightmares and stomach-curdling horror movie tropes. Here be dragons, there be sea monsters, and all the things that ever woke us up blinking into the 3am nothingness.  

The deep. See also: the source of all life. God’s raw ingredients. The womb, not the tomb—generative waters of creation from which everything ever beloved has sprung, from which anything that ever will be made comes forth.  

Conscious coupling at that same 3am, bodies finding each other in darkness, slick and sweet. A naked dive off a cliff into bracing salty depths. The rupture of the amniotic sac, harbinger of birth. The cry of a newborn startling milk letdown in a mother’s aching breasts.  

Thrashing pain, breathless chaos—and transition, re-creation, re-birth. The first contraction happens in the inky deeps of a uterus, days before the birth itself. Readying the body, opening a way, painful as it is. 

What is the difference between a deep that is terrifying, meaningless, forever swallowing alive all that wishes to live—and a deep that assembles and animates life? “The Spirit of God hovering over the waters.”  

God hovers. God breathes. God does not abandon, through all the creation, destruction, re-creation. 

Prayer
I dive with you into the deep, oh God. I break the surface and there you are still.

Molly BasketteAbout the Author
Rev. Molly Baskette is the lead pastor of First Church Berkeley UCC and the author of books about church renewal, parenting, spiritual growth and more. Sign up for her author newsletter or get information about her newest book at mollybaskette.com.