I've been thinking the last couple days about how
big God is.
It's easy to simplify God to the story-book Jesus, the God of Sunday school songs and pithy bumper stickers and even a friendly God of our salvation. But when you really think about it... wow.
This is the God who was all there was, before anything was-- in once sense, the only thing Real. Much more so than you or I, who had a start-- we sometimes think, in a cutesy Hallmark sense, of all the baby souls hanging out in heaven, waiting to be born, but the truth of the matter is (whenever it occurred), you and I had a Start. There was a time when we Were Not, and then a time when we Were. Birth helps us remember this, and so God having Been-- forever-- always all that there was-- is pretty much inconceivable to us. But sometimes, when you're really thinking about it, God gives us just the tiniest mental glimpse of what that looks like-- like an optical illusion that your brain thinks it comprehends for the briefest fleeting second-- because that is all we can handle, and even that much completely and utterly blows our minds.
Infinity in the future is somewhat easier for us to imagine, because it's convenient for us to imagine no real end to our lives, if not our bodily lives then that of who we Are-- but if you actually think about that either, really really think about what Forever means, you'll realize that you really had an endpoint in mind. Because that's how we think-- in days, and years, and lifetimes, of milestones which mark the passage of time and the division of our Existence into one portion or another. Realizing what Forever in the future means is staggering and exhilarating-- and realizing what Forever in the past means is the most humbling thing I can imagine.
This is not the God of cartoon-cloud heavens and long white beards and friendly salvation. This is the God who imagined everything there is, just out of his own head, you know-- who pieced together DNA and invented gravity and spun the universe into this incredibly intricate and complex and unthinkable mystery. He is the God who breaths Life and commands Death and orchestrates the thunder and the rain and the hurricane wind. And we are
dust, in both the most figurative and the most literal sense.
And he decided to give everything for us. We were not some project he made on a bored afternoon and then grew tired of. He was All there was, was completely and by definition Complete before anything we know or can fathom ever came into existence. Yet he Chose to create us and all that we experience, and once Created loved us so much that he decided to give Everything. For us. Some ungrateful, scornful dust. And now we get to Talk to him. The God who put my DNA together and gave me gravity.
And that is Big.
Somewhat on that note, here is what it says in the front of my Bible, opposite the first page of Genesis:
Before God ever created the world--
created us--
he knew how it would all turn out,
knew who we would be.
He knew that apple would be eaten,
knew each of us in our turn
would turn away.
He knew there would be wars,
and torture,
rape and murder,
bombing eachother to kingdom come.
He knew there would be broken relationships,
spite and judgement,
bitterness and hate.
He knew we would shake our fists to Heaven,
and curse his name.
He knew every terrible thing
I would ever do--
knew he would have to come to Earth
to buy me back from the dead--
and he figured I was worth it, anyway.
(8/15/2010)
