Do you ever stop to think just how big God actually is? It’s like capturing eternity—something that has always plagued me and thankfully reminded me of my humanness, my inability to comprehend the magnificence of our God.
I often ask God to reveal himself to me—that I might see Christ in the details of the day. As I sit and type to you now, I can look out the window and see the wind moving the trees, the breath of God poured out upon Creation. I see freshly planted grass that will grow from a tiny seed into fertile, green ground where my children will run in their bare feet. I think of the sunset last evening—even the air itself looked pink—painted by the hands of our awesome Creator. In Isaiah we are reminded of His massiveness: “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple” (Isaiah 6:1).
Just the train of his robe filled the temple!!!
We cannot comprehend God. And—darn it—aren’t we so arrogant to think we can? How often do I make God so small and myself the center of it all?
I was challenged this weekend at a seminar on shepherding my children to help them grow up to fear the Lord.
To fear the Lord! To appreciate and grapple with his magnificence. To not only fear him in the basic sense of the word but to appreciate him, to be in AWE of Him, to worship Him with an unequivocal devotion because He is God and we are NOT!
This quote discussed in our Sunday School class puts it much better than I:
“THE problem is clear: People are too big and God is too small. The answer is straightforward: We must learn to know that our God is more loving and more powerful than we ever imagined. Yet this task is not easy. Even if we worked at the most spectacular of national parks, or the bush in our backyard started burning without being consumed, or Jesus appeared and wrestled a few rounds with us, we would not be guaranteed a persistent reverence of God. Too often our mountain-top experiences are quickly overtaken by the clamor of the world, and God once again is diminished in our minds. The goal is to establish a daily tradition of growing in the knowledge of God.”
-Ed Welch, When People are BIG and God is Small
I am challenged this week, and, oh yes—for this lifetime (which again is but a vapor in comparison to eternity)—to constantly remind my children of how BIG our God is. We are reminded in Matthew 19:26 that “with God all things are possible.”
And as I remind my sweet little babies of the awe and wonder of their God, may I constantly speak the same Truth to myself.
Oh, Lord, I am not worthy. And yet…
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4:10