The Power of Nothingness

A Reflection on Faith, Suffering, and the Language of Math

The last several years have been anything but easy. Significant family changes, job transitions, the ongoing journey of full-time homeschooling, and my continued advocacy work — all of these have stretched me deeply. These are not just roles I fill. They are a higher calling; they have purpose and are rooted in something far greater than titles or achievements. I am so many things to so many people — but who am I to myself and before the Lord?

When I wrestle with that question, I return to the One who made me and in whom my true identity rests. At my core, I am a woman who champions the underdog, questions the status quo, values reform when it is needed, and acts rather than merely talks. I love justice and truth. I truly love people. I love a life-giving value system. I cannot bear to see others suffer; it burdens my heart, and I feel compelled to help how I am able— to bring about the betterment of others. I also work to better myself by taking ownership of my life and my decisions and intentionally evaluating my life consistently. This practice does produce discipline. Discipline leads me to make wiser choices with my life.

I have been asking God to reveal the places in my life where I fall short of His standard. I am often hard on myself. At times, I even make an idol out of trying to be perfect by focusing way too much on trying to keep “all the laws” that I forget to look past them — to see Him. The commandments and the Cross exist precisely because we cannot keep the law in its entirety. The Commandments actually show us why we need a Savior.

This year has brought me to my knees — physically prostrate before Christ — asking Him what He desires of my life. I have pondered what it means to be stripped to nothing so that He can fill me anew and direct my steps. It is anything but comfortable. It is excruciating to be precise. Over the years, prophetic words have been spoken over my life — many I didn’t understand until this past year. The people God used to speak life and truth had no idea the circumstances I faced, yet in His perfect timing, their words became clear. These have been good gifts — deeply personal confirmations of His love and affirmations of His path for me.

As I reflected on these moments, I asked God to lessen me and fill me with more of Him. And unexpectedly, He used my son’s first math lesson of the school year to teach me something far more valuable than I could have imagined.

While studying Genesis — the foundation of the Christian faith — I believe God was preparing my heart for this lesson. I’ve tried for years to make sense of my suffering, and one passage has stayed at the forefront which also happened to be the verse for the lesson:

“Christ is the visible image of the invisible God.
He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation,
for through Him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth.
He made the things we can see and the things we cannot see —
such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities in the unseen world.
Everything was created through Him and for Him.
He existed before anything else, and He holds all creation together.”
— Colossians 1:15–17 (NLT)

With that truth in mind, I filtered my questions through Scripture, asking: “Lord, what do You say about [fill in the blank]?” I have worn that question to a mere, finely frazzled thread.

It was during this season that the concept of Ex Nihilo — “out of nothing” — came up in my son’s math lesson. Genesis tells us the earth was without form and void; nothing existed except God Himself. Everything we see and cannot see was created by Him. God is our origin and our source. In short: God created the universe out of nothing.

Even the great geometer Euclid begins his work with the zero-dimensional concept of the point — something with no length, width, or height. It cannot be drawn because it has no measurable dimension.

This led me to learn and then reflect: there is profound power in zero. Entire lives and careers have been devoted to the study of “nothing.” If God began with nothing, perhaps we should consider the profound importance of nothingness more often and its application to our own lives.

Last week, a dear family friend sent me a brief teaching on the “theology of substitution,” and I immediately saw its connection to the mathematical idea of nothingness and the Gospel which saved my life. Though I am not a “math brain,” here are a few key facts:

• Zero-dimensional coordinate system: A single point with no dimension.
• Zeroth power: For any nonzero number, a^0 = 1.
• Unity: This equation represents oneness.

In John 17, Jesus prayed for believers to be one, just as He and the Father are one. God, the author of order and logic, created the language of mathematics. The One True God of infinite power gives us:

1^∞ = 1

He also created us in His image with no power apart from Him:

1^0 = 1 (One without needing anything else is still One…whole and complete. God did not have to add anything. He is Alpha and Omega, All-Sufficient.)

Even with our “zero” power, He gives us value. We could never achieve in and of ourselves.

Here’s where substitution theology comes in: God sent His Son to become nothing — giving up His divine power — to unite all things. In mathematical form:

0^0 = 1 (Nothing, raised to the nothing, gives us ONE.)

Christ, who knew no sin, became sin for us — so that it was as if He lived our life and we lived His. Reflect on that. He took on all of your sins and mine from the Garden of Eden to present, inclusive of the sins we are yet to commit! On the Cross, God looked upon His sinless Son as if He had committed every sin we ever would, so that He could look upon us as spotless and holy. Seeing that in the language of math, the language God spoke everything into existence, humbled me to tears. I think I might have gone through a package of tissues!

Only God — the true Genesis, the Author of Creation — can take a “zero” like me and make me whole, uniting me with Christ and with other Christ followers. He took a sinner like me and raised me to newness of life with Christ and made me whole and called me Beloved. Only Christ. Only the Cross.

I am humbled and in awe. I may never be the best at math, but learning to see the unseen has given me a new perspective on what God has done for me. He speaks in all things, pursues us through beauty, truth, and goodness, and delights in a willing heart far more than in perfection. None of us can keep the laws; that is why we need a Savior.

When He sees you, He sees the completion of His well-written “proof” — a life patterned and shaped out for His glory. I ask that you reflect on nothingness today and let God speak to you there. Zero. Nada. Nothing. Nought. Naught. Nil. Nothing belongs to all of us. It is a powerful, empty void. That void will be felt by everyone inhabiting this planet in some way or another. Zero is foundational because from it all other numbers are measured. It was from this null and void that God created all things perfectly.

Someone reading this may need to start at zero in this moment and embrace the nothingness. To be reduced to nothingness in this world is really everything! In my nothingness, Christ is my everything.

Rebecca Chaney is the Director for Restore Liberty Mississippi and a former board Member for the Mississippi Freedom Caucus. She is a lifetime Patriot Academy Constitution Coach and has hosted Biblical Citizenship classes and Constitutional Classes since 2020. She has helped start these classes all over the state of Mississippi. She is a homeschool Mom of ten years to her son and daughter. Rebecca is employed by the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security as the statewide Targeted Violence and Terrorism and Threat Prevention Trainer and is a community liaison for the MOHS between civilians, community, and law enforcement. She holds many credentials and certifications throughout the education and behavioral arenas as well as for the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security. (The views presented in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety (DPS) or the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security (MOHS).