The sudden disappearance of the Air France flight on its way from Brazil to France was a grim reminder of how powerful are the forces of nature, and how powerless we remain before them. An enormous jetliner, outfitted with all the latest technological gizmos and gadgetry, was apparently swatted out of the sky by the fearsome wind and rain of a howling thunderstorm. The plane and most of those who perished in it remain lost, swallowed up by the depths of the sea.

Little wonder that among humanity’s earliest creation stories almost all describe the primordial world as a place of untamed water, whipped up by wild winds — a place of chaos. Only a deity can control those chaotic forces, only God can bring order and beat back those primordial powers.

In Genesis God’s first creative actions are al…